INDUSTRY 
AND  HUMAN  WELFARE 


THE  SOCIAL  WELFARE  LIBRARY 
EDITED  BY  EDWARD  T.  DEVINE,  PH.D.,  LL.D. 

A  series  of  volumes  for  the  general  reader  and  the 
social  worker,  designed  to  contribute  to  the  under- 
standing of  social  problems,  and  to  stimulate  critical 
and  constructive  thinking  about  social  work. 

1.  SOCIAL  WORK:  by  Edward  T.  Devine.    Price 

$3-00. 

2.  THE  STORY  OF  SOCIAL  WORK  IN  AMERICA:  by 

Lillian  Brandt.    In  preparation. 

3.  COMMUNITY   ORGANIZATION:    by   Joseph   Kin- 

mont  Hart.    Price  $2.50  net. 

4.  INDUSTRY  AND  HUMAN  WELFARE:  by  William 

L.  Chenery. 

5.  TREATMENT  OF  THE  OFFENDER  :  by  Winthrop  D. 

Lane.    In  preparation. 


THE  SOCIAL  WELFARE  LIBRARY 

INDUSTRY 
AND  HUMAN   WELFARE 


BY 

WILLIAM  L.  CHENERY 

INDUSTRIAL   EDITOR,    "THE   SURVEY** 
EDITORIAL  WRITER,   "THE  NEW  YORK  GLOBE" 


jf3eto 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1922 

All  riahts  reserved 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 

jJ 


COPYRIGHT,  1922, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  printed.     Published  February,   1922. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


To 

IDA  BURNLEY  CHENERY, 

MY  MOTHER, 

WHO,  ALOOF  FROM  THE  LARGER  MANI- 
FESTATIONS OF  INDUSTRY,  HAS  EVER 
BEEN   ALIVE   TO   THE   RANG- 
ING   IMPLICATIONS    OF 
HUMAN  WELFARE 


574262 


INTRODUCTION  BY  THE  EDITOR 

The  Social  Welfare  Library  is  notably  enriched  by 
the  present  volume  on  Industry  and  Human  Welfare. 
Its  author  is  a  specialist,  but  he  has  not  written  for 
specialists.  He  is  a  journalist,  but  this  is  not,  strictly 
speaking,  an  attempt  to  "popularize"  a  technical  sub- 
ject. It  is  intended  for  that  already  large  and  increasing 
number  of  citizens  who  are  concerned  that  industry 
shall  be  productive  and  not  destructive ;  that  it  shall  pro- 
mote the  general  welfare,  without  injury  to  workers; 
that  the  work  of  the  nation  shall  be  done  by  the  natural 
and  legitimate  workers,  not  by  children  or  invalids,  and 
each  part  of  it  by  those  physically  and  mentally  qual- 
ified for  it. 

This  Library  is  designed  for  those  who  are  interested 
in  promoting  the  conditions  which  favor  a  happy  and 
useful  life  for  all  people.  Among  the  most  important 
conditions  are  those  which  affect  income.  Knowledge 
of  the  effect  of  industry  itself  on  the  worker  and  his 
family,  his  wages,  his  hours  of  labor,  the  regularity 
of  employment  and  the  hazards  of  industry,  is  there- 
fore fundamental.  The  public  official,  the  church  vis- 
itor, the  private  citizen  interested  in  family  welfare 
or  in  child  welfare,  has  to  understand  what  has  hap- 
pened as  a  result  of  the  industrial  changes  of  the  past 
century  if  he  is  to  get  the  elementary  satisfaction  to 
which  he  is  entitled  from  his  efforts.  At  the  present 

vii 


viii  Introduction  by  the  Editor 

moment  the  effect  of  industry  upon  the  individual — 
with  which  this  little  volume  especially  deals — is  of 
paramount  interest  and  importance. 

Like  the  text-book  on  Social  Work  by  the  Editor  of 
this  Library,  and  Professor  Hart's  Community  Organ- 
ization, the  two  volumes  which  have  preceded  it,  the 
present  volume  is  intended  as  a  contribution  to  an 
understanding  of  the  social  problems  in  a  particular 
field,  and  of  their  relation  to  the  human  welfare  in 
general  and  to  consciously  directed  social  progress. 

EDWARD  T.  DEVINE 
September,  1921. 


INTRODUCTION 

The  inspiration  of  this  small  book  has  been  a  desire 
to  ascertain  and  to  state  the  major  effects  of  the  rise 
of  the  factory  system  upon  the  welfare  of  the  Amer- 
ican people.  To  achieve  such  a  result  adequately  calls 
for  time  and  resources  far  beyond  those  at  any  com- 
mand. I  am  conscious  of  the  hazards  of  undertaking 
to  do  briefly  during  the  all  too  rare  leisure  hours  and 
days  at  the  disposal  of  a  working  newspaper  writer 
a  task  worthy  of  the  undivided  attention  of  a  group 
of  scholars.  Perhaps,  however,  the  very  brevity  of 
this  work  will  suggest  to  others  the  desirability  of  por- 
traying the  scenes  and  the  changes  upon  a  truly  gen- 
erous canvas. 

I  have  endeavored  first  to  describe  the  condition  of 
the  American  people  during  those  years  when  factories 
were  but  prophecies.  In  doing  this  I  have  been  actuated 
by  the  belief  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  understand 
the  results  of  the  factory  system  until  the  way  of 
life  of  those  who  came  before  the  industrial  revolu- 
tion had  been  envisaged.  In  piecing  together  this  pic- 
ture of  the  condition  of  the  people  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century  I  have  utilized  the  researches 
of  many  students.  Where  references  would  seem  to 
serve  the  purposes  of  readers  I  have  in  footnotes  indi- 
cated my  authorities.  The  sources  used  have  been  both 
prim.ary  and  secondary.  Chief  reliance  has  been  placed 


x  Introduction 

in  the  historic  governmental  reports  and  in  the  mono- 
graphs of  various  students.  But  I  have  been  at  all 
times  aware  of  the  heavy  obligation  which  all  workers 
in  this  field  owe  to  such  men  as  Professor  John  R. 
Commons,  John  B.  McMaster,  William  B.  Weeden, 
Victor  S.  Clark,  and  others  whose  researches  are  now 
the  classics  of  American  industrial  history. 

As  I  have  followed  this  study  I  have  been  driven 
irresistibly  to  the  conclusion  that  the  well  being  of  the 
people  of  this  country  lies  within  their  own  choosing. 
Throughout  the  history  of  the  nation  social  control  has 
been  exercised  through  the  national  and  state  govern- 
ments. Industry  has  been  directed  in  accordance  with 
the  purposes  of  those  who  happened  to  be  dominant  at 
the  time.  Laissez-faireism  has  been  a  doctrine  useful 
to  the  owners  and  managers  of  industry.  It  has  seldom 
been  appealed  to  as  an  argument  to  defeat  the  wishes 
of  those  who  possessed  property  and  political  priv- 
ileges. It  has  been  chiefly  a  rein  upon  legislation  de- 
signed to  alleviate  the  condition  of  the  poor.  This  has 
not  been  wholly  a  conscious  process.  The  advocates  of 
economic  anarchy,  which  is  an  uncharitable  translation 
of  the  French  phrase  laissez-faire,  have  seldom  been 
aware  that  they  were  practicing  social  control  in  behalf 
of  the  owners  of  factories  while  they  preached  industrial 
drift  to  workers.  But  for  all  the  unconsciousness 
of  the  development  the  record  is  not  the  less  convinc- 
ing. 

In  making  this  study  many  inviting  by-paths  have 
been  crossed.  American  industrial  history  is  richly  sug- 
gestive. Unworked  fields  are  many.  One  of  the  most 
promising  is  a  study  of  the  hazards  which  working 


Introduction  xi 

people  historically  have  encountered.  A  fruitful  chap- 
ter of  such  a  work  would  recount  the  fortunes  of  the 
debtor  prisoners.  The  change  from  a  system  of  im- 
prisonment for  debt  to  public  insurance  against  the 
hazards  of  industry  measures  a  social  revolution.  Of 
necessity  this  matter  had  to  be  excluded  from  detailed 
consideration.  Other  questions  of  equal  and  even  of 
greater  importance  have  had  to  be  pushed  aside. 
Among  the  most  tempting  of  these  is  the  problem  of 
the  migration  of  people  which  has  followed  the  prog- 
ress of  factories.  The  population  of  the  country  has 
been  redistributed  by  industrial  need.  An  agricultural 
people  has  been  moved  to  towns  and  cities.  A  wide 
range  of  issues  has  been  created  by  the  shift.  Con- 
gestion, transportation,  housing,  recreation,  community 
organization  are  some  of  the  unanswered  questions 
occasioned  by  the  movement  of  people  from  the  country 
to  the  city  in  response  to  factory  demand.  Considera- 
tion of  these  matters  would,  however,  lead  too  far  afield 
from  the  proper  limits  of  this  book.  So,  too,  the  allur- 
ing questions  of  industrial  control  have  been  avoided. 
These  are  germane  to  the  central  problem  of  stating  the 
consequences  of  the  rise  of  the  factory  system  upon 
human  welfare.  The  question  of  space  has  again  been 
imperative.  A  brief  volume  cannot  infringe  upon  the 
-prerogatives  of  an  encyclopedia.  Industrial  govern- 
ment with  all  its  related  problems,  so  charged  with  sig- 
nificance for  the  future  of  society,  has  accordingly  been 
avoided. 

I  wish  here  to  acknowledge  my  obligation  to  Miss 
Mary  Van  Kleeck,  director  of  industrial  studies  of  the 
Russell  Sage  Foundation,  John  A.  Fitch  of  the  New 


xii  Introduction 

York  School  for  Social  Work,  Professor  William  E. 
Dodd  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  and  Miss  Lilian 
Brandt,  all  of  whom  generously  read  my  manuscript 
and  who  saved  my  book  from  slips  which  it  would 
otherwise  have  carried.  I  do  not  wish,  however,  to 
suggest  that  any  of  these  friends  bears  any  responsi- 
bility for  the  opinions  herein  expressed.  Finally  I 
would  express  my  appreciation  to  the  editor  of  this 
series,  Edward  T.  Devine;  and  to  Paul  U.  Kellogg, 
editor  of  the  Survey,  for  that  generous  treatment  of 
an  associate's  time  without  which  this  work  could  not 
have  been  performed. 

WILLIAM  L,  CHENERY 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION vii 

CHAPTER 

I     THE  PIONEER  NATION i 

II     THE  RISE  OF  INDUSTRY 24 

III  THE  WORKER'S  FAMILY 44 

IV  WAGES  IN  INDUSTRY 77 

V     HOURS 95 

VI     REGULARITY  OF  EMPLOYMENT     .      .      .  114 

VII     THE  HAZARDS  OF  INDUSTRY  ....  134 

VIII     THE  STATUS  OF  WORKERS   ....  145 


r 

INDUSTRY   AND   HUMAN 
WELFARE 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  PIONEER  NATION 

THE  history  of  industry  in  America  calls  to  mind 
Goethe's  ironic  saying :  "Whatever  one  desires  in  youth 
one  has  in  age  in  abundance."  For  to  a  remarkable 
extent  the  growth  of  mechanical  production  in  the 
United  States  has  fulfilled  the  desires  of  some  of  the 
founders  of  this  republic.  Responsive  to  a  request 
from  the  House  of  Representatives  in  1791,  Alex- 
ander Hamilton  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  wrote  a 
brilliant  argument  alf  of  fhe  development  of 

manufacturing.  He  set  forth  advantages  which  the 
United  States  might  get  from  manufactures.  As  a 
nation  we  have  attained  much  of  what  Hamilton  fore- 
saw. Some  of  the  benefits  forecast  became  the  serious 
social  evils  which  in  subsequent  generations  threatened 
the  health  of  the  republic.  Only  too  adequately  did 
the  rna*  ,re  nation  leach  the  goals  of  its  youth.  The 
aspir:;V>i:s  of  the  fathers  fulfilled  in  the  lives  of  the 
children  created  conditions  which  now  call  for  states- 


2  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

manship  not  less  alert  and  vigorous  than  that  of  the 
original  great  advocate  of  American  industry. 

In  Hamilton's  judgment  the  independence  and  pros- 
perity of  the  new  republic  would  be  furthered  by  the 
national  protection  and  stimulation  of  a  variegated 
industry.  The  steam  engine  had  not  then  become  a 
practical  tool  and  only  the  new  inventions  in  use  in 
the  English  textile  mills  had  begun  to  make  clear  the 
outlines  of  modern  industry.  But  Hamilton  saw  lucid- 
ly the  enormous  potentialities  of  rr  <nufacturing.  He 
was  eager  to  persuade  the  feeble  federal  government 
to  nurture  industry  and  mechanical  invention.  He  was 
willing  to  do  this  at  a  time  when  even  the  most  popu- 
lous and  influential  states  were  still  predominantly 
agricultural. 

The  effectiveness  with  which  Hamilton's  policies 
were  put  into  practice  by  his  countrymen  became  the 
admiration  and  wonder  of  later  travelers  from 
Europe.  The  United  States  built  rapidly  according  to 
the  plans  designed  by  the  first  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury. The  thing  which  the  great  protagonist  of  indus- 
try and  his  immediate  successors  did  not  see,  however, 
was  that  the  social  organization  ar.-i  the  political  prin- 
ciples which  were  adapteJ  to  handicraft  industry  and 
to  agriculture  might  prove  grievously  inaQv^uate  in  that 
complex,  impersonal,  industrial  society  whose  attrac- 
tions he  set  forth  with  logic  and  with  eloquence.  Ham- 
ilton sought  to  change  the  method  of  production,  but  he 
was  not  aware  that  mechanical  industry  involved  the 
creation  of  entirely  new  human  relationships.  Conse- 
quently, while  he  pleaded  for  the  nurture  and  for  the 
protection  of  industries  which  then  had  hardly  been 


The  Pioneer  Nation  3 

conceived,  he  did  not  know  that  the  people  of  the 
country  also  required  protection  against  the  devastat- 
ing influences  of  the  new  order.  Because  he  did  not 
know  this,  because  generations  passed  before  America 
became  conscious  of  it,  because  even  to-day  the  full 
reality  is  not  commonly  accepted,  the  industrial  prob- 
lem exists. 

"The  expediency  of  encouraging  manufactures  in  the 
United  States,  which  was  not  long  since  deemed  very 
questionable,  appears  at  this  time  (1791^  to  be  pretty 
generally  admitted,"  Hamilton  was  able  to  say.  He 
pointed  out  what  now  seems  almost  too  obvious  for 
Utterance,  namely,  that  the  employment  of  machinery 
forms  anTtem  of  great  importance  in  the  general  mass 
of  the  national  industry,  and  then  he  turned  to  some 
of  the  details  of  the  progress  he  proposed.  The  fol- 
lowing paragraphs  show  the  line  of  his  reasoning  as 
plainly  as  they  foretell  some  of  the  evils  which  even 
to-day  are  unconquered : 

"The  cotton  mill,  invented  in  England  within  the  last 
twenty  years,  is  a  signal  illustration  of  the  general  propo- 
sition which  has  just  been  advanced.  In  consequence  of 
it,  all  the  different  processes  of  spinning  cotton  are  per- 
formed by  means  of  machines,  which  are  put  in  motion 
by  water  and  attended  chiefly  by  women  and  children; 
and  by  a  smaller  number  of  persons,  in  the  whole,  than 
are  requisite  in  the  ordinary  mode  of  spinning.  And  it 
is  an  advantage  of  great  moment  that  the  operations  of 
this  mill  may  continue  with  convenience  during  the  night 
as  well  as  during  the  day.  The  prodigious  effect  of  such 
a  machine  is  easily  conceived.  To  this  invention  is  to  be 
attributed,  essentially,  the  immense  progress  which  has 
been  so  suddenly  made  in  Great  Britain  in  the  various 
fabrics  of  cotton. 

"This  is  not  least  valuable  of  the  means  by  which 
manufacturing  institutions  contribute  to  augment  the 
general  stock  of  industry  and  production.  In  places  where 


4  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

those  institutions  prevail,  besides  the  persons  regularly 
engaged  in  them,  they  afford  occasional  and  extra  em- 
ployment to  industrious  individuals  and  to  families,  who 
are  willing  to  devote  the  leisure  resulting  from  the  inter- 
missions of  their  ordinary  pursuits  to  collateral  labors, 
as  a  resource  for  multiplying  their  acquisitions  or  their 
enjoyments.  The  husbandman  himself  experiences  a  new 
source  of  profit  and  support  from  the  increased  industry 
of  his  wife  and  daughters,  invited  and  stimulated  by  the 
demands  of  the  neighboring  manufactories. 

"Besides  this  advantage  of  occasional  employment  to 
classes  having  different  occupations,  there  is  another,  of 
a  nature  allied  to  it,  and  of  a  similar  tendency.  This  is 
the  employment  of  persons  who  would  be  otherwise  idle, 
and  in  many  cases  a  burthen  on  the  community,  either 
from  the  bias  of  temper,  habit,  infirmity  of  body  or  some 
other  cause,  indisposing  or  disqualifying  them  from  the 
toils  of  the  country.  It  is  worthy  of  particular  remark, 
that,  in  general,  women  and  children  are  rendered  more 
useful,  and  the  latter  more  early  useful,  by  manufacturing 
establishments  than  they  would  otherwise  be.  Of  the 
number  of  persons  employed  in  the  cotton  manufactories 
of  Great  Britain,  it  is  computed  that  four-sevenths  nearly 
are  women  and  children;  of  whom  the  greater  propor- 
tion are  children  and  many  of  them  of  a  tender  age."  * 

This  line  of  argument  was  touched  again  when  Ham- 
ilton was  urging  the  development  of  the  iron  indus- 
try. Thus  he  said: 

'The  United  States  already  in  great  measure  supply 
themselves  with  nails  and  spikes.  .  .  .  The  first  and  most 
laborious  occupation  in  this  manufacture  is  performed 
by  watermills;  and  of  the  persons  afterwards  employed, 
a  great  proportion  are  boys,  whose  early  habits  of  in- 
dustry are  of  importance  to  the  community,  to  the 
present  support  of  their  families,  and  to  their  own  future 
comfort." 

These  conditions  deemed  so  desirable  by  the  great 
constructive  statesman  of  American  industry  and  fin- 
ance have  been  in  part  the  evils  against  which  subse- 

*  Works  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  Volume  3,  Manufactures,  page 
207  and  following. 


The  Pioneer  Nation  5 

quent  generations  have  waged  increasing  warfare. 
Hamilton,  in  fact,  advocated  industry  as  a  means  of 
creating  the  circumstances" which  as  soon  as  manufac- 
turing was  firmly  entrenched  were  recognized  as  peril- 
ous to  the  national  well-being.  He  reckoned  among  - 
the  advantages  of  industry  the  list  of  what  the  present 
day  regards  as  wrongs.  Child  labor,  employment  of 
women  and  children  at  night,  the  regarding  of  manu- 
facturing employment  as  a  source  of  supplementary 
income  rather  than  as  the  basis  of  living  for  those 
employed  by  it,  continuous  industry, — these  are  a  vital 
part  of  the  social  problem  created  by  the  development 
of  manufactures.^  Nevertheless,  they  are  precisely 
what  Hamilton  advocated.  Only  too  well  in  these 
respects  has  the  republic  fulfilled  the  ambitions  of  its 
youth. 

The  essential  advantage  which  Hamilton  sought  was 
the  labor-saving  utility  of  machinery.  To  save  labor 
hYs  In  fact  been  the  one  and  persistent  object  of  indus- 
trial invention  everywhere.  The  intensity  of  the  early 
American  desire  for  labor-saving  methods  of  produc- 
tion is  attributed  to  the  partially  occupied  condition  of 
the  land  and  to  the  temptation  of  a  superlative  abun- 
dance of  unexploited  natural  resources.  Every  man 
saw  riches  in  sight  if  he  could  obtain  labor.  To  under- 
stand plainly  the  salient  effects  of  industry  upon  human 
welfare  it  is  therefore  needful  to  take  this  fact  into 
consideration.  It  was  a^determming  national  motive,^ 
To  comprehend  the~effects  the  new  industry  engendered 
in  the  United  States,  it  is  also  necessary  to  recall  to 
mind  the  state  of  the  American  people  during  the 
years  immediately  preceding  the  establishment  of  the 


6  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

factory  system.  Unless  in  fact  the  work  and  life  of 
the  people  for  whose  well-being  Hamilton  and  others 
urged  the  fostering  of  manufactures  are  pictured  it 
is  difficult  to  see  in  perspective  what  have  been  the  con- 
sequences of  industry  for  human  welfare  in  this 
country. 

QqQ  hundred  and  twentVr£Lve-vears  ago  the  factory 
system  had  hardly  been  conceived  in  the  United  States. 
To-day  we  are  the  greatest  manufacturing  nation..  At 
thniawn  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  United  States 
was  a  sparsely  settled  strip  bounded  by  the  Atlantic 
and  by  the  Appalachian  ranges,  a  pioneer  country  sup- 
ported chiefly  by  agriculture.  The  century  which  ended 
with  the  outbreak  of  the  World  War  saw  the  rise  and 
maturing  of  the  factory  system  under  a  government 
which  through  the  Monroe  Doctrine  claimed  primacy 
over  two  continents.  Within  the  space  of  those  few 
Y  generations  the  isolated  colonial  settlements  of  Napo- 

:  Icon's    time   had    become   the   continental   citadel    of 

strength  to  which  the  Great  Powers  turned  for  aid  in 
time  of  need.  In  this  cosmic  drama  the  rise  of  the 
factory  system  in  America  has  played  a  notable  role. 
Worshippers  of  power  and  of  magnificence  may  find 
indeed  an  altar  for  their  prayers  and  their  thanksgiv- 
ing in  industrial  America.  The  multiplication  of 
riches,  the  development  of  luxury,  and  the  growth  of 
might,  attributable  to  machine  manufacture,  are  the 
familiar  products  of  our  industrial  revolution.  But 
what  has  happened  to  the  individual  American  by  reason 
of  these  vast  changes?  How  has  industry  affected 
human  welfare?  Is  life  happier  and  more  carefree 
for  the  majority  of  men  and  women  and  children  in 


Pioneer  Nation  7 

this  land  because  of  the  new  industry?  Is  the  day  of 
the  skilled  artizan  more  rilled  with  satisfaction?  And 
how  has  the  common  laborer  fared  ?  How,  again,  have 
women  and  children  of  the  working  classes  been  af- 
fected? Is  work  under  the  factory  system  a  better 
regime  for  them?  Does  life  offer  more  to  them  than 
their  great-great-grandparents  secured?  What  are  the 
outstanding  changes  in  human  welfare  occasioned  by 
the  rise  of  mechanical  industry? 

During  the  years  between  the_end  of  the  American 
revolution""and..  the  beginning-oL-the-^era  of  railroad  - 
tignsppjrtationjn  1830,  factories  took  firm  root  in  the-, 
United  States^    The  necessities  of  the  colonists,  suxL. 
denlvjcuf^ff^by^  the  war  of  independence  from_J;he_ 
customary  English  supplies,  caused  men  of  Alexander  _ 
Hamiitgrfs  ouflooiri^realize~the  need  for  the  estab- 
lishmenirbf  manufactures  in  the  new  nation.    The  ex- 
pefienceTbf  the  jrountry  --during-  the  War  of  1812  em- 
phasized   the    lesson. 


sectionat,~naT:ional,  and  internatipnatrtended  to..  .refer 
force~the~~arguments  made  in  behalf 


industry.  In  an  amazingly  short  time  the  United  States 
f  rom  Massachusetts  to  Baltimore  became  an  industrial  , 
nation.     The^jfiTsjt_^pltOJi-factQr-y  was  established  in  — 
Rhode  Island  in  i7^by_Saii^l_^later.     Thfi_rapid 
developmenf^came  a  f  ter  1815,  and  by  1830  the  new  in- 
dustrial  order  wa^_ejUre.richeiL!L  What  then  was  the 
statcroFthe  American  people  during  the  first  decades  of 
the  nineteenth  century?    In  particular,  what  was  the 
condition  of  the  working  classes  ? 

At  the   beginning   of   the   nineteenth   century   the 
*  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  1885,  page  162. 


8  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

people  of  the  United  States,  it  has  been  observed, 
neither  believed  nor  practiced  their  political  professions 
of  human  equality.  Politically  the  United  States  was 
a  government  of,  by,  and  for  the  property  holders.  A 
man  could  not  vote  in  most  states  unless  he  owned 
property,  and  in  many  states  unless  he  complied  with 
certain  religious  tests.  A  woman  could  never  vote 
save  by  an  oversight,  as  in  New  Jersey,  where  a  hast- 
ily drafted  constitution  had  neglected  to  exclude 
women.  Citizenship  in  the  colonies  was  like  mem- 
bership in  a  corporation.  The  possession  of  stock  or 
property  was  a  prerequisite  to  voting  and  to  holding 
office.  The  ownership  of  fifty  acres  of  farm  land  or 
of  equivalent  property  was  the  customary  test.  Prop- 
erty voted;  men  did  not.  T^xatipj3_3^iihoutj^epresen- 
tation,  was^  the  revolutionary  war  cry.  The  political 
revolution  which  preceded  the  change  in  our  industrial 
system  tended,  it  is  true,  to  eliminate  the  property 
qualifications  for  the_sunrage.  But  it  was  not  until 
the  eigHteelPEwenties  tKait  the  greatest  battles  were 
fought  for  manhood  suffrage.  As  late  as  1837  the 
attitude  of  property  holders  toward  the  extension  of 
the  ballot  was  expressed  as  follows  in  the  Pennsylvania 
Constitutional  Convention : 


"But,  Sir,  what  does  this  delegate  propose?"  said  a 
defender  of  franchises  for  the  upper  classes.  "To  place 
the  vicious  vagrant,  the  wandering  Arabs,  the  Tartar 
hordes  of  our  large  cities  on  a  level  with  the  virtuous 
and  good  man?  .  •  .  These  Arabs,  steeped  in  crime  and 
vice,  to  be  placed  on  a  level  with  the  industrious  popu- 
lation is  insulting  and  degrading  to  the  community.  .  .  . 
I  hold  up  my  hands  against  a  proceeding  which  confers 
on  the  idle,  vicious,  degraded  vagabond  a  right  at  the 


The  Pioneer  Nation  9 

expense  of  the  poor  and  industrious  portion  of  this 
commonwealth."  * 

The  right  was  merely  that  of  suffrage,  and  the  men 
termed  Tartar  hordes  steeped  in  vice  and  crime  were 
only  those  whose  property  was  insufficient  to  qualify 
them  for  the  ballot.  Political  power  throughout  the 
United  States,  during  the  years  when  the  present  in- 
dustrial system  was  being  created,  was  exercised  by 
a  minority  of  property  owners.  How  small  that 
minority  was  may  be  estimated  from  the  vote  on  the 
constitutional  convention  in  Massachusetts — a  conven- 
tion called  to  extend  the  franchise.  In  that  state  only 
men  who  owned  real  estate  which  brought  in  an  income 
of  three  pounds  annually,  or  who  had  other  property 
to  the  extent  of  sixty  pounds,  were  permitted  to  par- 
ticipate in  elections.  In  1820  the  population  of  Mas- 
sachusetts wasr  523,287.  There  were  142,588  free 
white  males  over  sixteen  years  of  age.f  Only  18,349 
men  voted  on  the  question  of  holding  a  constitutional 
convention.  J  The  men  who  could  not  vote,  who 
had  no  real  share  in  the  determination  of  public  affairs, 
were  vastly  more  numerous  than  the  voters. 

In  the  New  England  Magazine  of  January,  1890, 
Dr.  J.  F.  Jameson  reported  his  computations  of  the 
early  voting  in  Massachusetts  and  elsewhere.  He  says : 

"Taking  all  the  excluded  together,  we  may  venture  to 
bring  our  own  figure  down  to  16  or  17  per  cent,  and  may 
conclude  that  in  round  numbers  about  one-sixth  of  the 

*  Penn.  Con.,  1837 :  Debates  2,  487.  Quoted  in  "Suffrage  in  the 
United  States,"  by  Kirk  H.  Porter,  University  of  Chicago  Press, 
1918. 

t  United  States  Census,  1820. 

t  Nile*  Weekly  Register. 


io  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

population  of  old  Massachusetts,  or  say  55,000  men, 
50,000  of  them  in  Massachusetts  and  5,000  in  Maine,  were 
entitled  to  vote  in  1776.  .  .  .  About  16  per  cent  of  the 
inhabitants  could  vote  if  they  chose.  How  many  of  them 
did  so?  ...  The  number  of  those  who  actually  did  vote 
in  those  ten  years  (1780-1789,  inclusive)  amounted  to 
just  about  three  per  cent."  * 

The  property  and  other  qualifications  for  voting  in 
Massachusetts  were  near  enough  like  conditions  in  the 
other  states  to  give  a  fair  picture  of  the  degree  of  polit- 
ical self-government  exercised  by  the  American  people 
in  the  decades  prior  to  the  development  of  mechanical 
industry. 

The  qualifications  for  holding  office,  furthermore, 
were  stricter  than  those  for  voting.  In  spite  of  the 
assertion  of  state  constitutions  that  all  men  are  born 
equally  free  and  independent  and  that  therefore  all 
just  government  originates  from  the  people  and  is  in- 
stituted for  the  general  good,  the  holding  of  office  was 
in  practice  of,  by,  and  for  privileged  property  holders. 
McMaster  well  says:  "The  poor  man  counted  for 
nothing.  He  was  governed,  but  not  with  his  consent, 
by  his  property-owning  Christian  neighbors.  He  was 
one  of  the  people,  but  he  did  not  count  as  such  in  the 
apportionment  of  representation.  In  short,  the  broad 
doctrine  that  governments  derived  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed  was  not  accepted 
by  the  'Fathers.'  The  most  they  were  ready  to  admit 
was  that  all  governments  derive  their  just  powers  from 
the  consent  of  the  taxpayer."!  This  condition  had 
an  enormous  influence  on  the  development  of  industry 
in  this  country. 

*  No  change  for  some  decades. 

t  "Rights  of  Man  in  America,"  Cleveland,  Ohio,  1893,  page  21. 


The  Pioneer  Nation  n 


Political  power  was  utilized  to 


__ 

of  maj^fa^tujduigjndustry  and  thajLpower  was  wielded 
strictly  in^  the  interest  oj  the  _^opejtx:holdii5g_grgu£ 
wteThad  historically  possessed  the  franchise.  "L'etat, 
c'est  moi"  was,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  still  is, 
the  emblem  of  American  property  owners,  just  as  truly 
as  it  was  the  startled  expression  of  an  indiscreet  French 
king. 

^ndustriaUyJhe  populationjwas  predominantly  rural 
and  agricultural.  As  late  as  1820  less  than  five  per 
cent  of  the  American  people  lived  in  cities  of  8,000 
population  and  over.*  In  1790  there  were  but  five 
cities  in  the  United  States  having  a  population  of 
8,000.  Their  combined  population  was  less  than 
100,000,  forming  only  2.4  per  cent  of  the  population 
of  the  country.  The  great  majority  of  Americans, 
perhaps  95  per  cent,  were  countrymen  at  the  time  that. 
the~Touhdations  joi  the  industrial  _system  were  lajd. 
7^r~fna"Jority  now  live  in  the  cities.  Farmers  were  of 
many  classes.  The  richest  were  masters  of  principali- 
ties. They  were  aristocrats  whose  lives  and  whose 
views  were  fashioned  upon  European  ideals.  The 
republican  court  which  President  Washington  himself 
maintained  at  Philadelphia  satisfied  the  punctilious  re- 
quirements of  visiting  French  nobility.  From  the 
estates  of  gentlemen  who  sought  to  develop  in  this 
country  an  old  world  social  order  the  holdings  of 
farmers  varied  in  size  and  value  to  the  poor  clearing 
of  the  pioneer.  Manufacturing  was  a  hojnejndustry__ 
carried  on  chiefly  byfarmers  and  their^wives  ^nd  chil- 

*  "A  Century  of  Population  Growth  in  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment," Census  Bureau,  Washington,  1909,  page  14. 


12  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

dren  and  servants,  and  by  wandering  mechanics^  The 
jirtizan  was  sometimes  a  freeman  and  .often  an  inden-^ 
ture3  servant  or  aTsiave Yet  his  was  the  ingenuity 
wBicHj^ented  many  of  the  technical  processes  upon 
which  the  factory  system  was  later  built. 

^Skilled  workers  in  Maryland  and  southward  were 
largely  slaves  and  indentured  servants.  In  Penn- 
sylvania at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  it 
has  been  estimated  that  one-half  of  the  artizans  were 
redemptioners,  so-called.  The  redemptioner  was  the 
immigrant  who  was  bound  to  serve  a  term  of  years  in 
payment  for  his  passage  overseas.  During  his  servi- 
tude he  or  she  could  be  sold  from  master  to  master 
after  the  manner  of  slaves.  The  indentured  servant  and 
his  variant,  the  redemptioner,  were  always  potentially 
free  men  and  seem  to  have  been  counted  as  such  in  the 
first  censuses.  Yet  while  he  served  the  bondsman's 
status  was  close  to  that  of  a  slave.  The  system  of 
servile  labor  was  furthermore  as  old  as  the  colonies. 
It  had  grown  out  of  the  apprentice  system.  From  the 
very  beginnings  of  Maryland  and  of  Virginia  men  and 
women  had  been  imported  to  do  the  work  of  the 
plantations.  The  capture  and  enslavement  of  Africans 
tended  to  supplant  white  servitude  in  the  South  but  the 
system  of  indentured  servants  was  continued  well  into 
the  nineteenth  century.  Men  and  women  willing  to 
settle  in  the  United  States  and  lacking  the  price  of  the 
passage  were  induced  to  sign  papers  of  indenture.  The 
master  of  the  ship  or  some  merchant  who  had  advanced 
the  transportation  expenses  would  dispose  of  these  im- 
migrants on  the  arrival  of  the  ship  at  Philadelphia  or 
Baltimore,  or  at  some  other  port.  This  trade  was 


The  Pioneer  Nation  13 

carried  on  in  full  force  until  1817.*  Isolated  cases 
were  mentioned  as  late  as  1835. 

These  white  contract  immigrant  laborers  were  an 
important  section  of  the  productive  population.  Effec- 
tually the  redemptionersf  were  slaves  for  a  limited 
period  of  time.  Englishmen,  Irish,  Scotch,  and  later 
Germans  and  Swiss,  were  all  the  material  of  the  sys- 
tem. Curiously  enough,  too,  most  of  the  German  re- 
demptioners  were  brought  in  after  the  War  of  In- 
dependence. In  1817  three  small  sailing  vessels  left 
the  Dutch  port  Helder  with  1,100  redemptioners  for 
New  Orleans.  During  a  passage  of  about  four  months 
503  perished.  The  survivors  were  sold  to  work  out 
their  passage.  The  number  of  years  served  by  these 
immigrants  in  order  to  redeem  their  freedom  varied. 
They  might  work  only  four  years.  But  if  they  were 
indentured  while  children  they  might  be  compelled 
to  serve  until  the  twenty-second  or  the  twenty- 
fourth  year  was  passed.  While  still  in  bonds  the  in- 
dentured man  or  woman  had  few  rights  which  the 
master  was  bound  to  respect.  A  redemptioner  could 
not  marry  except  with  the  permission  of  his  owner. 
The  bondsman  could  be  arrested  and  imprisoned  where- 
ever  found  if  he  traveled  without  a  permit.  He  could 
be  beaten  cruelly  by  way  of  discipline. 

On  March  21,  1817,  the  following  advertisement 
appeared  in  the  Baltimore  American,  and  it  was  re- 
peated daily  until  April  7: 


*  "White  Servitude  in  Maryland,"  by  Eugene  Irving  McCormac, 
Johns  Hopkins  University  Press.  Page  109. 

t  "History  of  the  German  Society  of  Maryland,"  by  Louis  P. 
Hennighausen,  Baltimore,  Md.,  1909. 


14  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

"GERMAN  REDEMPTIONERS. 

"The  Dutch  ship  'Johanna,'  Capt.  H.  H.  Bleeker,  has 
arrived  before  this  city  and  now  lies  in  the  cove  of 
Wiegman's  Wharf;  there  are  on  board,  desirous  of 
binding  themselves  for  their  passage,  the  following  single 
men :  two  capital  blacksmiths,  a  rope  maker,  a  carrier, 
a  smart  apothecary,  a  tailor,  a  good  man  to  cook,  several 
young  men  as  waiters,  etc.  Among  those  with  families 
are  gardeners,  weavers,  a  stone  mason,  a  miller,  a  baker, 
a  sugar  baker,  farmers  and  other  professions."* 

Prior  to  the  Revolutionary  War  the  only  skilled 
laborers  in  the  province  of  Maryland  had  come  as  inden- 
tured servants  from  Ireland  and  England,  f  Light  on 
the  position  in  society  of  such  mechanics  is  cast  by 
such  newspaper  advertisements  as  the  following,  which 
appeared  in  The  Maryland  Gazette  and  Baltimore 
Advertiser  of  January  25,  1785: 

"Ran  away  from  the  subscriber,  living  on  Monocacy, 
Carroll's  Manor,  in  Frederick  county,  six  miles  from 
Frederick- Town,  on  the  2/th  of  December  last,  an  in- 
dented Irish  servant-man  known  by  the  name  of  Patrick 
Quigley,  a  shoemaker  by  trade,  of  middling  stature,  well 
set,  of  ruddy  complection,  short  black  hair,  about  5  feet 
2  or  3  inches  high,  24  years  of  age ;  had  on  and  took 
with  him  when  he  absented  a  felt  hat  half  worn,  short 
blue  sailor's  jacket,  red  waistcoat,  pair  of  white  cloth 
breeches,  a  pair  of  white  and  black  speckled  milled  stock- 
ings, and  a  pair  of  old  shoes  with  steel  buckles.  Who- 
ever takes  up  said  servant  and  brings  him  to  the  sub- 
scriber or  secures  him  in  any  jail  so  that  his  master  may 
get  him  again  shall  have,  if  taken  20  miles  from  home, 
Twenty  shillings ;  if  30  miles,  Thirty  shillings ;  if  a  far- 
ther distance,  Three  pounds,  including  what  the  law 
allows  and  reasonable  charges  if  brought  to  Daniel 
Hardman,  January  8,  1785."  $ 

So  far  reaching  was  this  system  that  tradesmen, 
clerks,  schoolmasters,  and  even  ministers  were  adver- 

*  Hennighausen,  op.  tit.,  page  59. 

t  "White  Servitude  in  Maryland,"  page  35. 

\Idem,  page  51. 


The  Pioneer  Nation  15 

tised  for  sale.  Ballagh  relates  that  "Colonel  William 
Preston  of  Smithville,  Virginia,  bought  at  Williams- 
burg  about  1776  a  gentleman  named  Palfrenan  as  a 
teacher  for  his  family;  he  was  a  poet  and  a  scholar, 
a  correspondent  and  a  friend  of  the  celebrated  Miss 
Carter,  the  poetess,  and  also  of  Dr.  Samuel  John- 


son." 


The  apprentice  system  of  which  the  redemptioners 
were  so  signal  an  expression  broke  down,  it  is  true, 
during  the  first  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century.  But 
the  industriaj_revolutionK  the  change  from  manual  to. 
mechanical  production,  came  about  while  the  ideas  and 
~QUstqms_oFthat  jservile  egoaomir  system  .-still-  lingered. 
Labor  had  still  something  of  a  slave  status  when  New 
England  and  the  Middle  Atlantic  States  began  to  erect 
factories. 

Freedom  and  independent  status  came  ultimately  to 
these  redemptioners  because  of  the  abundance  of  the 
land.  After  their  periods  of  service  had  passed  the 
majority  set  up  establishments  for  themselves  on  the 
edge  of  the  wilderness.  Many  of  them  founded  well 
known  families.  Some  of  the  signers  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  were  former  bondsmen.  The 
self-made  men,  so-called,  were  common  in  colonial 
days;  and  yet,  even  though  every  redemptioner  was 
potentially  a  free  man  and  a  citizen,  the  gulf  between 
the  bond  and  the  free  was  wide. 

Such  was  indentured  labor.  But  beyond  the  bonds- 
men were  the  free  artizans  to  the  North  and  the  Negro 

*  "White  Servitude  in  the  Colony  of  Virginia,"  by  James  Curtis 
Ballagh,  Johns  Hopkins  Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Sci- 
ence, 1895,  page  83. 


1 6  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

slaves  in  the  South.  What  was  the  status  of  the  free 
artizan  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century? 
He  was  inconspicuous  south  of  Mason  and  Dixon's 
line,  and  to  the  north  as  far  as  Pennsylvania  he  was 
in  active  competition  with  the  redemptioner,  who  had 
what  was  for  the  period  of  his  service  a  slave  status. 
The  artizan  worked  from  sunrise  to  sunset.  His  wages 
were  low.  He  was  esteemed  of  little  significance  in  the 
social  scale.  Nowhere  is  the  position  of  the  property- 
less  working  man  in  the  early  years  of  the  republic 
described  more  vividly  than  in  a  debate  in  Congress 
over  the  pay  of  soldiers.  The  Annals  of  Congress, 
January  6,  1794,  tell  plainly  what  the  "Fathers" 
thought  of  common  folk. 

The  House  was  debating  the  military  bill.  The 
United  States  paid  its  soldiers  three  dollars  monthly. 
The  bill  proposed  to  raise  this  to  four  dollars.  A  mem- 
ber of  the  House  offered  an  amendment  which  raised 
this  figure  to  five.  Then  in  truth  Congress  was  agi- 
tated. The  official  reporter  says: 

"Mr.  Wadsworth  did  not  see  any  reason  for  the  pro- 
posed additional  dollar  per  month.  If  he  had  thought 
it  necessary  he  would  have  been  very  ready  to  mention 
it.  In  the  States  north  of  Pennsylvania,  the  wages  of  a 
common  laborer  were  not,  upon  the  whole,  superior  to 
those  of  a  common  soldier.  .  .  .  Mr.  Boudinot  said  that 
he  should  be  very  sorry  to  recommend  the  augmentation, 
if  he  thought  that  it  would  induce  farmers  and  sober, 
industrious  folk  to  quit  their  families  and  professions  in 
exchange  for  a  military  life.  .  .  .  America  would  be  in 
a  very  bad  situation,  indeed,  if  an  additional  pay  of  twelve 
dollars  a  year  could  bribe  a  farmer  or  a  manufacturer 
to  enlist.  .  .  .  Originally  troops  had  been  raised  for  less 
than  two  dollars  per  month.  The  pay  had  been  aug- 
mented to  three,  and  was  now  on  the  way  of  being  raised 
to  four.  He  wished  to  make  its  advance  gradual.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Smith  said  that,  as  to  the  rate  of  labor,  good  men 


The  Pioneer  Nation  17 

were  hired  to  work  in  Vermont  for  eighteen  pounds  a 
year,  which  is  equal  to  four  dollars  per  month,  and  out 
of  it  they  find  their  own  clothes.  He  thought  it  a  very 
dangerous  plan  to  raise  the  wages  of  soldiers  at  this 
time,  when  every  article  was  above  its  natural  price; 
because,  when  things  return  to  their  old  level,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  reduce  their  wages.  .  .  .  The  members 
of  Congress  had  six  dollars  per  day,  and  it  would  be  no 
easy  matter  to  alter  that,  which  he  seemed  to  hint  might 
not  be  quite  improper.  He  thought  that  high  pay  would 
only  serve  to  make  the  soldiers  get  drunk." 

Mr.  Smith's  views  seemed  to  find  support,  for  in 
the  end  the  amendment  was  rejected.  This  debate 
shows  at  least  how  the  political  representatives  of  the 
socially  and  economically  privileged  classes  viewed 
ordinary  workmen  during  the  early  years  of  this  re- 
public. But  the  nation  is  not  always  as  drab  as  a 
debate  in  Congress  would  indicate.  The  life  of  the 
skilled  artizan  in  New  England,  at  any  rate,  compared 
favorably  with  that  of  men  of  other  classes.  ,  _Mechan- 

In  1789  Dr.  Franklin  said  of 


New  England:* 

"Calculations  carefully  made  do  not  raise  the  propor- 
tion of  property  or  the  number  of  men  employed  in 
manufactures,  fisheries,  navigation  or  trade  to  one-eighth 
of  the  property  and  people  occupied  by  agriculture  even 
in  that  commercial  quarter." 

Most  mechanics  seem  to  have  followed  many  voca- 
tions. The  career  of  Thomas  B.  Hazard,  "Nailer 
Tom,"  as  set  forth  in  his  diary  f  was  apparently  of 
wide  and  entertaining  variety.  The  entries  of  a  few 
months  picture  a  way  of  living  which  socially  is  richer 
than  the  condition  which  the  wage-earning  or  even 
the  lower-salaried  classes  find  to-day.  Hazard  was 

*  Quoted  in  New  England  Magazine,  January,  1890,  page  487. 
t  "Historical  Narragansett,"  Volume  i,  page  32,  and  following. 


1  8  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

brief  but  apparently  accurate,  and  his  mind  was  con- 
stantly taking  note  of  what  passed.  As  his  nickname 
indicates,  he  was  a  nailmaker  by  trade,  and  yet,  accord- 
ing to  his  own  account,  nailmaking  seems  to  have 
been  reserved  for  days  and  evenings  when  other  labors 
were  not  pressing.  Among  the  entries  are  such  as 
these: 

"Making  bridle  bits,  worked  a  garden,  dug  a  wood- 
chuck  out  of  a  hole,  made  stone  wall  for  cousin,  planted 
corn,  cleaned  cellar,  made  hoe  handle  of  bass  wood,  sold 
a  kettle,  brought  Sister  Tanner's  goods  in  a  fish  boat, 
made  hay,  went  for  coal,  made  nails  at  night,  went 
huckleberrying,  raked  oats,  plowed  turnip  lot,  went  to 
monthly  meeting  and  carried  Sister  Tanner  behind  me, 
bought  a  goose,  went  to  see  town,  put  on  new  shoes, 
made  a  shingle  nail  tool,  helped  George  mend  a  spindle 
for  the  mill,  went  to  harbor  mouth  a  gunning,  killed  a 
Rover,  hooped  tubs,  caught  a  weasel,  made  nails,  made 
a  weasel  cage,  opened  the  cow's  hoof,  split  wood,  made 
a  shovel,  went  swimming,  staid  at  home,  made  rudder 
irons,  went  an  eeling," 

By  iiis^jown  a^c^unt^HazarcL  who  was  a  famous 
,imicjiajiic__^iid_j^  highly  ia  Jus 

region,  was  thus^ajman  of  odd  jobs.  He  was  farmer, 
gardener,  fisher,  hunter,  boatman,  veterinarian,  tool- 
maker,  bridle-bitmaker,  nailer,  cooper,  woodworker, 
boat  builder,  to  cite  only  a  few  of  the  crafts  which  he 
followed.  AJe^ajiics_oiJiis_skill  and  ingenuity_were 
the  type  whose  Jnventions  made  possible  much  of  the 
')!!^^  in  theLJmted 


Such  men  often  became  the  heads_pf  manu 
turing  establishments  when  later  power  machinery  was 
set  at  work.  Many  of  these  men  enriched  themselves 
an3~Became  the  founders  of  wealthy  families.  Eree 
mechanicsjn  New  .England  were  not  citizens  in  a  full 


The  Pioneer  Nation  19 

__sense  unlessjhey  had  property,  but  they  had  a  respect: 
able  status  ancTan  interesting  life  during  the  early 
years  of  the  republic.  In  attempting  to  estimate  the 
major  effects  of  the  industrial  revolution  in  the  United 
States  it  is  important  to  consider  what  has  happened 
to  the  vocational  descendants  of  "Nailer  Tom."  Some, 
of  course,  like  Henry  Ford,  have  found  opportunities 
imperial  in  their  scope,  while  others  —  with  whose  for- 
tunes this  book  has  concern  —  have  a  very  much  less 
interesting  life.  Hazard's  wages  seem  to  have  varied 
from  $1.50  to  $2  a  day  and  upon  occasion  he  took  his 
pay  in  kind.  Thus  on  December  2,  1778,  he  notes 
that  his  work  at  Oziel  Wilkinson's  has  come  to  "three 
oxen  which  he  has  paid  me." 

Womea_jand   children  were  constantly  employed. 
For  the  most  part  they  wgrgjgiggggd  in  tht>  hnirip_nr 
in  jhefield.  but  they  were  nonejthe_less_busy.    The  dis-^ 
cipline_i?f  hard  wnrkjaras_esteeme.d  the  .best-educative 
inflngrirfi  fnr  children.     Where  the  apprentice  system 
continued  young  children  were  bound  out  to  learn  their 
trades.     Because  of  the  predominance  of  agriculture 
in  the  colonies  and  because  of  the  greater  development 
of  home  manufactures  the  apprentice  system  was,  how- 
ever, never  so  common  in  the  United  States  as  in  En- 
gland.   But  the  need  for  some  variety  of  employment^ 
to  take  th^^a^ej^^pprentjceship  was  felt  :_  apH~sfTthg- 
Manufactory  House,  established  in  Boston  not  long 
iBetore  the  Revolutionary  Wjar^jwas  esteemed  to  be  a 
'schootr  '~  WitliainTIoTinei57  a  PlgrabgJLof  Jh.fi-SQcie.ty- 
responsible    for   the   building   of   the   establishment,. 


'  'Learned  at  Jea^^^QQ  chil3imlaad  women  to  spin  in 


2O  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

the  most  compleat  manner."*  The  first  nine  operatives 
^ngagieSn^rSarnuel  "Slater,  the  British  mechanic  whose 
experience^  rnade  jpossible  thejestajblishment  of  the  first 
cotton  mill  irj_J^JL^nitedL  States,  _were_seven  boys 
and^Fwo"gTrTs  between  the  ages  of  seven  and  twelve 
years.  Moses  Brown,  the  cotton  merchant,  who  before 
his  venture  with  Samuel  Slater  had  been  engaged  in 
supplying  coarse  cotton  cloth  to  southern  plantation 
owners  for  the  use  of  their  slaves,  considered  the  em- 
ployment of  children  to  result  in  "near  a_  total  saving 
of  labor  to  the  country." 

The  hour.s__of  lajborjln_n_early_  all  industries  "were 
measured ^jthe_suri,  jrom  sunrise  to  sunset  constitut- 
rlrigr^EHe~working  day/1  Although  there  were  a  few 
earlieF'Hurries,  n^jmjdLj^4__was__the  subject  of 
shorter  hours __senpj[islv___ag[itatedt  and,  not  untiL_the 
period  of  1835  anc^  I^4°  were  shorter  hours  adopted 
to  any  extentf It~was  several  years  after  that  date  be- 
fore ten  hours  became  the  rule  in  the  mechanic  trades, 
while  in  the  textile  industries  the  ten  hour  system  is 
"a  modern  innovation,"  as  yet  adopted  only  in  Massa- 
chusetts, so  far  as  America  is  concerned,  Carroll  D. 
Wright,  Chief  of  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statis- 
tics of  Labor,  reported  in  1885.  The  hours  of  labor 
at  the  beginning  of -the -industrial  age  were  in  fact 
those  of  agriculture.  The  textile  mills  at  Lowell 
were  the  pride  of^J^ew^jEn^landL during  the  early  dec- 
ades of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  yet  it  seemed  en- 
tirely right  ancT  natural  that  little  girls  not  over  ten 

*  "The  History  of  Manufactures  in  the  United  States,"  by  Vic- 
tor S.  Cfarlc,"page.™r88r .-. 
f  "History 'of  LaBor  in  the  United  States,"  Vol.  I:  393. 


The  Pioneer  Nation 


years  of,  age  should  work  fourteen  and  fifteen  houi 
daily  alonggidg^their  elders.*  From  five  in  the  morn- 
ing untiTseven  in  the  evening  were  the  customary  hours 
in  the  early  mills,  and"  even  this  was  shorter  than  the 
working  day  in  the  country  during  the  busy  season. 
Doffer  girls  were  paid  two  dolfors  ajjveek  at  Lowell, 
but  these  wages  w^erjeje^t^m^dLjvery  high,  so  high 
that  the  daughters  of  professional  men  were  drawn  to 
the  mills,  just  as  during  the  World  War  the  wages 
paid  in  munitions  plants  attracted  classes  of  workers 
who  ordinarily  do  not  enter  factory  work.  During  the 

J!@^-a^tJhc^Aj^MM6SWhBt»9k^ea-»w0^  was  scarce 

and  trade  tnnk  the  form  of  barter)  Wages  were  paid 
in  clothing^  or  groceries,  or  in  orders  for  such  com- 
modities. This.__sysieni,  afterwards  known  as  the 
truck  system,  and_still  one  of  the  lingenngL.eyils.JiL 
outlying^  industrial  establishments,  was  almost  uni- 
versal  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  "Of 
actual  money  the  workingman  had  little/'  says  the 
Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor,f  and 
"when  cash  became  absolutely  necessary,  they  were 
often  obliged  to  exchange  store  orders  therefor  at  a 
considerable  discount.  Employers  kept  stores  of  gro- 
ceries, clothing,  boots  and  shoes,  and  particularly 
liquor  and  tobacco,  and  it  is  evident  from  the  inspec- 
tion of  old  account  books  that  a  liberal  share  of  the 
wages  of  labor  was  paid  in  rum  and  gin."  The  almost  \ 
universal  result  of  this  method  of  payment  was  that  / 


,JH^Early  Factory  Labor,"  by  Mrs.JIarriet _^3 
AnnuaI^epOft,'MassacmisetEs"Bureau  of   Statisti 

—  OP-    .-- . • — - ~"  """"'"'  '•          - ' — ••        '      -•••'-' — —••--'-    

~l«$3. 

— fAnhual  Report,  1885. 


Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

the  workingman  was  continually  in  debt  and  effectually 
bound  to  his  employment. 

Wages  were  certainly  not  high.  In  Massachusetts, 
for  example,  the  same  general  level,  with  considerable 
minor  variations,  seems  to  have  been  maintained  be- 
tween 1800  and  1815.  A  laborer  got  from  35  cents 
to  75  cents  a  day  or  $13.33  a  month.  Carpenters  were 

id  from  80  cents  to  a  dollar  a  day.  A  shoemaker 
earned  about  $5.52  a  week  or  23.4  cents  per  pair  of 
shoes  when  on  piece  work.  A  teacher  was  paid  from 
$30  to  $50  a  month,  while  a  painter  got  about  62  cents 
a  day.  A  mason  got  as  much  as  $1.66  a  day.  Boys 
employed  in  agriculture  were  rated  at  16  2/3  cents  a 
day  in  1808.  In  1815  blacksmith  horseshoers  were 
paid  90  cents  a  day,  or  if  they  had  board  in  part 
payment,  45  cents.  The  same  year  boat  builders  were 
paid  at  the  rate  of  $1.13  daily  or  50  cents  with  board. 
Clockmakers  and  coopers  each  had  the  rate  of  $1.13 
daily.  Women  employed  as  domestic  servants  re- 
ceived their  board  and  50  cents  a  week.  Skilled  foun- 
drymen  earned  $1.13  and  their  unskilled  associates 
87^4  cents  daily.  Harnessmakers  were  paid  from 
45  cents  to  88  cents  a  day,  depending  on  whether  or 
not  they  boarded  themselves.  Laborers  that  year 
varied  from  $8  a  month  with  board  to  $1.50  daily,  the 
high  mark.  Millwrights,  machinists,  and  house  paint- 
ers were  paid  $1.13  a  day.  Ship  and  sign  painters, 
however,  got  $1.38.  Tailors  earned  $3  a  week  with 
board,  or  $6  without.  Printers  were  on  the  basis  of 
$1.13  a  day.  Patternmakers  had  the  same.  Ship 
riggers  got  $1.25  and  ship  carvers  $1.38.* 

*  "Wages  and   Prices :  1752-1860."    Sixteenth  Annual  Report, 
Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor. 


The  Pioneer  Nation  23 

Thg  employment  of  women  and  children  was  uni- 
jversal  during  th^yparg  prior  to  the  "estaSfishment  of 
the  f actorj_system4n^4he^l^  From_the 

very_beginnings  of  this^£^)untr_y_JHLOmen  an^jchildren 
had  workecT That  their  toil  wasjimited  to  the  home 
and  to  agriculture  and  to  domestic  industry  was  mere- 
ly cfoe-frrthe  fact  that  there  were  no  other  opportunities 
for  employment.  The  beTTef  curferTt  recently  that  the 
establishment  of  the  industrial  system  drove  women 
and  children  to  work  is  without  foundation.  The 
mechanical  revolution  changed  only  the  kind  of  work 
done.  The  fact  of  work  itself  was  assumed.  In  any 
effort  to  recall  the  social  and  economic  background  of 
the  industrial  system  in  this  country  it  is  vital  to  re- 
member this.  A  farmer  could  hardly  hope  to  live 
without  the  cooperative  employment  of  his  wife  and 
children. 

The  ideas  which  gained  sanction  during  the  centuries 
prior  to  the  beginning  of  power  production  were  car- 
ried over  into  the  new  era. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  RISE  OF  INDUSTRY 

IN  such  a  world  the  foundations  of  modern  industry 
were  laid.  Labor  was  essential  but  not  in  all  grades 
dignified.  Powerjnjmost  of  the  states  was  in  the 
hands- a£-a_seleclive  fewt.  The  possession  or  acquisi- 
tion of  property  was  the  common  test  of  fitness  of 
the  resident  to  become  the  active  citizen.  Government 
was  the  expression  of  the  will  of  property  holders. 
Slaves,  indentured  servants,  women,  men  without  suf- 
ficient holdings  and  income  to  vote,  had  no  voice  in  the 
framing  of  public  policies  or  the  making  of  laws.  Gov- 
ernment, the  expression  of  the  will  of  property  hold- 
ers, was  therefore  naturally  utilized  to  nurture,  protect 
and  develop  manufacturing  industries  as  new  sources 
of  wealth  to  individuals  as  well  as  to  the  state. 

Prior~4a-ihe -Revolutionary  War  the  power  of  the 
British  government  had  been  used  to  retard  the  devel- 
opment of  manufacturing  industries  in  the  American- 
Colonies.  After  the  Revolutionary  War  the  federal 
government  and,  to  an  extent,  the  states,  used  their 
powers  to  build  up  an  American  manufacturing  sys- 
tem. Without  interruption,  from  1789  to  the  present, 
the^  government.  liaFlIoiterlEcCmaiiufacturinglindu^try. 
ChieHyJ>y  ^tariffs  and  ^patent  laws,  in  part  by  embar-. 
and_to_a_iesserjexteiit.  by  .bounties  and  other  spe- 
24 


The  Rise  of  Industry  25 

cial  advantages,^  manufactures  have  been  consistently 
aided.  I  TEese  facts,  familiar  enough,  throw  light  on 
the  doctrine,  long  prevalent  and  still  powerful  in  this 
country,  that-the  state  must  not  inter  f  ere__with_lhe_: 
rnanagernentjDf  industry^  What  is  meant^pJLcDiirse, 
*C3^LS^  gover.nmenL_state^or  national,  must  not  in- 
tervene  in  order  tajsaieguard  the  health  and 


oTj^ge-workers  in  industry,  or  of  consumers.  For 
few  of  those  who  resent  so-called  government  inter- 
ference in  behalf  of  either  workers  or  consumers  object 
in  the  slightest  to  governmental  activity  in  the  inter- 
est of  the  owners  and  managers  of  industry.  On  the 
contrary,  such  support  has  been  courted  from  the  very 
earliest  days.  Laissezj,aireism,  jthe  hands-off_policx 
in  its  American  version,  was  developed  not  toJEend  off. 
the  "friendly  offices  of  governments  from  Jnf_^t  jjndus.- 
tries,  but  to^reven^tho^e_goy^niments  frpiiL  exerting 
themselves^iir  the"  interest  of  consumers  and  workers 
when  the  infant  industries  had  grown  great. 

In  eyery_way~  which-  the  builders  of  this  republic. 
could  conceive  the  government  has  been  led  to  .nurture 
manufactures.  Mechanical  industry  was  from  the  out- 
set seen  to  be  a  national  enterprise  of  boundless  im- 
portance to_  jhe_United  States^  The  experiences  of  the 
Revolutionary  War,  of  the  War  of  1812,  and  also  of 
the  intervening  period  between  those  struggles,  induced 
statesmen  to  take  public  measures  to  aid  in  the  creation 
of  manufacturing  establishments.  Although  at  first 
the  seafaring  interests  of  New  England  and  the  plant- 
ing interests  of  the  South  opposed  national  aid  to 
manufactures,  to  advocate  protection  for  private  in- 
dustry was  not  during  the  early  decades  to  be  politi- 


26  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

cally  partizan.  Despite  their  differing  politics  Albert 
Gallatin  and  Alexander  Hamilton  were  both  zealous 
friends  of  American  mechanical  industry.  Tench  Coxe 
and  Thomas  Jefferson  were  friends  and  correspond- 
ents.* 

States  as  well  as  the  federal  government  exerted 
themselves.  Thus  in  his  address  to  the  New  York 
Senate  on  January.  2CjJ_i8n,  Governor  Daniel  D. 
Tompkins  expressed  a  common  view  when  he  observed 
that  "The^astpni.sJh^  been  made 

in  thejmproyemeat  and  extension"  of  domestic  manu- 
factures was  a  source  of  lively  satisfaction.  .7.  ";  and 
when  he  added,  "Let  us~extend  to  thenT^I.  e.,  manufac- 
tures) the  utmost  encouragement  and  protection  which 
our  finances  will  admit."  The  encouragement  and  pro- 
j£cdonji§£rjd^  The  gen- 

eral court  of  Massachusetts,  for  example,  directed  that 
the  sum  of  two  hundred  pounds  be  paid  out  to  Robert 
and  Alexander  Barr,  "to  enable  them  to  complete  cer- 
tain machines  for  carding,  roping,  and  spinning  cotton 
and  sheep's  wool."  Iliejinajc^jn^s^wyeh^these  artizan- 
inyentors  devised  were  put^n^exhjbitijpn  for  the  bene- 
fifjSjS3^  t  Thomas  Somers 

was  given  twenty  pounds  by  the  general  court  of  Mas- 
sachusetts in  order  to  enable  him  to  build  certain  mach- 
ines for  the  carding,  spinning  and  roping  of  cotton 
wool.  Somers  had  learned  how  to  construct  the  ma- 
chines while  in  England.  Many  other  incidents  of  this 
nature  were  recorded.  The  states,  as  well  as  certain 

*  "Memoir  of   Samuel   Slater,"  by  George  S.  White,   Phila- 
delphia, 1836. 
t  Op.  cit.,  page  295. 


The  Rise  of  Industry  27 

cities  and  private  organizations,  were  willing  to  expend 
public  money  to  stimulate  the  development  of  manu- 
factures. That  policy  has  its  contemporary  parallel  in 
the  aid  given  by  chambers  of  commerce  to  new  manu- 
facturing enterprises  in  some  communities,  and  in  a 
larger  way  to  the  aid  given  war  industries  by  the 
national  government  during  the  struggle  with  Ger- 
many, and  more  recently  in  the  loans  accorded  the  rail- 
roads. While  this  form  of  state  aid  may  not  have  in- 
fluenced the  subsequent  development  of  manufactures 
in  any  important  way,*  it  at  least  recorded  the  atti- 
tude of  public  authority  toward  interfering  with  in- 
dustry. 

Perhaps  the  most  potent  influence  of  state  legisla- 
tion upon  the  development  of  industry,  however,  is  to 
be  found  in  the  liberal  incorporation  laws.  The  earl- 
iest corporations  chartered  by  the  states  were  gener- 
ally semi-philanthropic,  and  some  of  them  received 
gifts  of  public  land.  But  far  more  important  than  such 
donations  was  the  building  up  of  the  legal  fiction  that 
the  corporation  was  a  person.  The  specific  powers 
granted  to  groups  of  individuals  and  the  limited  lia- 
bility which  each  individual  thus  incurred  gave  to  thef 
corporation  an  enormous  opportunity  for  development^ 
It  may  well  be  that  not  otherwise  could  manufacturing 
industries  have  been  so  rapidly  rooted  in  this  country, 
but  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  the  form  of  incorpora- 
tion devised  in  the  United  States  has  had  a  lasting  in- 
fluence upon  the  varying  prosperity  of  the  men  and 
women  and  children  who  fill  the  ranks  of  industry. 

^History  of  Manufactures  in  the  JJnited_§tates^  1607-1 860," . 


28  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

The  need  for  protecting  industry  and  commerce  was^ 
in  truth  one  of  the  determining  motives  which  led  to 
the  consolidation  of  the  thirteen  independent  states. 
Alexander  Hamilton  said  that  the  suggestion  of  giving 
Congress  the  power  to  make  uniform  regulations  for 
commerce  in  all  the  states  was  first  made  at  a  conven- 
tion held  at  Hartford.*  A  committee  was  appointed 
by  Congress  in  1 784  to  consider  the  matter.  Jefferson, 
Gerry,  and  three  others  were  members  of  the  commit- 
tee. It  recommended  "to  the  legislatures  of  the  sev- 
eral states,  to  vest  the  United  States  in  Congress  as- 
sembled, for  the  term  of  fifteen  years,  with  a  power 
to  prohibit  any  goods,  wares  or  merchandise  from 
being  imported  into  any  of  the  states,  except  in  vessels 
belonging  to  and  navigated  by  citizens  of  the  United 
States  or  the  subjects  of  foreign  powers  with  whom 
the  United  States  have  treaties  of  commerce."  f  Indi- 
vidual states  did  enact  tariff  and  non-importation  laws. 
Among  these  were  Pennsylvania,  Rhode  Island  and 
Massachusetts.^  Immediately  after  the  end  of  the 
Revolutionary  War  an  extensive  importation  of  manu- 
factured products  from  Great  Britain  was  begun. 
Among  the  effects  of  this  movement  were  the  stimula- 
tion of  luxury  and  the  draining  of  coin  from  the 
country.  Merchants  and  mechanics  suffered  especially, 
and  the  papers  were  filled  with  complaints  even  from 
farmers.  The  merchants,  mechanics  and  tradesmen 
of  Baltimore,  New  York,  and  Boston,  as  early  as  1789, 

*  Hamilton's  Works,  2 :  26:  "Early  Stages  of  the  United  States 
Tariff  Policy,"  by  William  Hill.  Publications  of  the  American 
Economic  Association,  1893,  page  95. 

t  Journals  of  Congress,  9 : 185. 

$  Hill,  op.  cit.f  page  145  and  following. 


The  Rise  of  Industry  29 

began  to  petition  Congress  for  relief  from  the  compe- 
tition of  foreign  imports.  The  New  York  committee 
appeared  to  the  first  Congress  on  April  18,  1789,  say- 
ing in  part,  "Wearied^by  their  fruitless  exertions  your 
petitioners  have  long  looked  forward  with  anxiety  for 
the  establishment  of  a  government  which  would  hayj£ 
power  to  check  the  growing  evil  (i.  e.,  the  importation, 
of  foreign  goods),  andjgxtend  a  protecting  hand  to  the 
interests  of  commerce  ^ndjte  jirts*  Such  a  govern^ 
menjt  i£liQw  established.  On  the  promulgation  of  the 
constitution  now  just  commencing  its  operations,  your 
petitioners  discovered  in  its  principles  the  remedy  they 
had  so  long  and  so  earnestly  desired."  The  mechanics 
and  manufacturers  then  added  a  list  of  articles  which 
they  said  could  be  profitably  made  in  New  York  pro- 
vided the  general  government  gave  them  the  protection 
sought  in  their  petition.*  When  the  Constitution  had 
actually  been  adopted,  among  the  first  acts  of  Congress 
was  the  passage  of  the  tariff  law  of  1789.  Although 
the  purpose  of  this  was  in  part  to  raise  revenue,  by 
its  very  terms  it  proclaimed  the  protective  principle. 

The  Annals  of  Congress  f  show  how  generally  ac- 
cepted was  this  principle  of  protection.  Representa- 
tives of  every  state  which  had  industries  desired  tariff 
barriers  against  foreign  competition,  but  at  the  same 
time  many  sought  the  free  importation  of  the  raw  ma- 
terials used  in  their  own  industries.  James  Madison, 
who  introduced  the  original  bill,  sought  only  five  per 
cent  duties  for  revenue  although  he  readily  accepted 
the  protection  principle.  Fitzsimmons  of  Pennsylvania 

*  American  State  Papers:    Finance,  Vol.  I,  page  9. 
1 1 :  pp.  173-174. 


30  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

introduced  a  substitute  bill  and  stated  clearly  the  pur- 
pose in  the  following  words : 

"The  tax  is  meant  not  only  for  revenue  but  as  a  regu- 
lation of  commerce,  highly  advantageous  to  the  United 
States.  .  .  .  The  legislature  of  Pennsylvania  granted  aid 
by  discriminating  in  the  manner  proposed  and  with  like 
aid  from  the  government  of  the  United  States,  the  mer- 
chants may  no  longer  fear  the  machinations  of  the 
opulent  companies  of  Europe."* 

There  was  not  the  slightest  tinge  of  laissez-faireism 
in  the  doctrines  preached  by  the  early  Pennsylvania 
representatives  to  the  Congress  of  the  fathers.  Nor 
was  there  any  hesitancy  on  the  part  of  the  Congress 
of  1789  to  grant  the  protection  desired  by  the  early 
merchants  and  manufacturers  who  were  at  that  time 
chiefly  mechanics  dependent  on  the  favor  of  the  better 
established  merchant  class.  Even  rum  was  protected. 
Massachusetts  demanded  this,  while  Madison  argued 
that  an  industry  so  pernicious  needed  no  protection. 
Madison  was  defeated.f  William  Maclay,  senator 
from  Pennsylvania,  records  in  his  notes  the  course  of 
the  debate  in  the  Senate : 

"I  set  out  with  naming  over  the  greater  part  of  the 
articles  on  which  the  protective  duties  of  Pennsylvania 
were  twelve  and  one-half  and  thirteen  per  cent  in  New 
York.  I  reasoned  from  the  effect  of  these  duties  on  the 
promoting  the  manufactures.  But  by  the  present  law  the 
manufacturers  would  stand  on  worse  ground  by  five  per 
cent  than  they  had  done  under  state  laws;  and  although 
the  United  States  were  not  absolutely  obligated  to  make 
good  the  engagements  of  states  to  individuals,  yet  as 
the  individuals  had  embarked  their  property  in  these 
manufactures,  depending  on  state  laws,  I  thought  it 
wrong  to  violate  those  laws  without  absolute  necessity."  t 

*  Annals  1 : 141. 

t  Ibid.  1 :  173. 

$  Sketches  of  Debates,  page  68,  quoted  by  Hill. 


The  Rise  of  Industry  31 

Protection  was  thus  evidently  HepmpH  a  sound  prin- 
ciple by  the  lawmakers_cif  1789^  Laissez-faireism  cer- 
tainly did  not  then  arise  to  denounce  government  inter- 
ference with  industry  or  commerce. 

The  practical  differences  of  opinion  as  to  protection 
were  mainly  those  of  degree.  Free  traders,  so-called, 
were  content  with  low  duties,  while  protectionists 
have  demanded  higher  ones.  There  have,  however, 
been  divergencies  of  desire  as  to  the  interests  to  be 
protected.  The_New  England  commercial  and  marine 
groups  were  for  a  long  time  opposed  to  the  national 
development  of  manufactures.  But  their  opposition 
on  their  belief  that  the  .government 


should  not  ajdjheir_riyjljntej^sj^  The  tradition  of 
theTetghTeenth  century  sanctioned  the  closest  relation- 
ship between  governments  and  industry.  Alexander 
Hamilton  in  his  statement  to  Congress  listed  eleven 
different  methods  of  fostering  industry  "which  have 
been  employed  with  success  in  other  countries"  :  pro- 
tecting duties,  embargoes  on  importation,  embargoes 
on  exportation  of  raw  materials  to  rival  nations,  pe- 
cuniary bounties,  premiums,  exemption  of  raw  mater- 
ials from  duty,  drawbacks  of  the  duties  which  are 
imposed  on  the  materials  of  manufactures,  encourage- 
ment of  new  inventions,  judicious  regulations  for  the 
inspection  of  manufactured  commodities,  the  facili- 
tating of  pecuniary  remittances  from  place  to  place  and 
the  facilitating  of  the  transportation  of  commodities. 
Most  of  these  methods  have  at  one  time  and  another 
been  used  either  by  the  states  severally  or  by  the  United 

*^Xhe_Tariff  History  of_the  United  States,"  by  F.  W.  Taussig, 
page  70.    , 


32  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

States.  Often  enough  the  action  taken  has  been  jus- 
tified. The  point  is  that  the  interference  and  assist- 
ance of  the  government  have  been  consistently  sought 
by  those  concerned  with  building  up  private  business. 
This  unbroken  custom  is  of  the  utmost  significance 
in  reckoning  the  influence  of  mechanical  industry 
upon  the  welfare  of  the  American  people. 

It  is  enlightening  from  this  point  of  view  to  recall 
briefly  the  trend  of  argument  on  the  tariff  contro- 
versy. From  1789  until  the  present  that  issue  has 
never  been  long  dormant  in  this  country.  The  vary- 
ing positions  taken  with  reference  to  it,  moreover,  in- 
dicate with  definiteness  the  changing  condition  of  the 
people.  In  following  the  early  discussions  it  is  neces- 
sary to  keep  in  mind  some  of  the  customary  and,  at 
the  time,  unchallenged,  assumptions  of  the  founders  of 
American  industry.  First  of  all,  as  has  been  indicated 
by  the  statements  of  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Tench 
Coxe,  the  labor  of  women  and  children  was  taken  to 
be  a  part  of  the  natural  order.  Again,  mechanical 
power,  it  was  thought,  would  so  lighten  labor  that 
women  and  children  could  easily  bear  the  burden  of 
manufactures.  Finally,  the  early  American  industrial- 
ists, in  contrast  with  the  English  factory  owners,  were 
very  much  concerned  about  the  shortage  of  labor.  In 
England,  in  spite  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  there  was  an 
undoubted  surplus  of  workers  both  in  the  rural  dis- 
tricts and  in  the  towns.*  In  the  United  States  the 
-West  were  constantly  attracting  set- 
This  set  up  a  competition 


Jbetween  the  agricultural  interests^  of  the  West 


—  ^"TEe  Village  Laborer,"  by  J.  L.  and  Barbara  Hammond. 


The  Rise  of  Industry  33 

had  a  long  and  important  influence  on  the  development 
of  the  nation.  Because  of  the  relative  ease  with  which 
the  adventurous  laborer  might  become  a  pioneer 
farmer,  wages  of  labor  in  Eastern  manufactories  were 
fixed  by  the  level  of  Western  agricultural  earnings. 
Of  necessity  they  had  to  be  high  enough  to  prevent 
too  ready  migrations  if  the  labor  force  were  to  be  stabil- 
ized. As  compared  with  the  wages  paid  in  England 
the  earnings  of  mechanics  and  laborers  were  high  in 
the  United  States  during  the  first  decades  of  the  nation, 
because  of  the  abundance  of  unsettled  land. 

The  problem  which  the  advocates  of  the  establish- 
ment of  American  industry  confronted  was  accord- 
ingly the  discovery  of  a  method  of  meeting  the  compe- 
tition of  British  manufacturers  who  employed  cheap 
labor  and  at  the  same  time  of  preventing  migrations 
westward.  British  competition  was  as  serious  after 
the  War  of  1812  as  it  had  been  at  the  conclusion  of 
the  Revolutionary  War.  American  industrialists 
turned  to  the  tariff.  Then  developed  one  of  the  most 
interesting  phenomena  in  American  industrial  history 
— the  labor  argument  in  the  veering  tariff  discussion. 
Hamilton,  with  characteristic  perspicacity,  had  seen 
previously  that  the  difficulty  of  high  wages  could  in 
part  be  remedied  by  stimulating  immigration  as  well 
as  by  the  use  of  women  and  children.  "We  shall," 
said  he,  "in  a  great  measure  trade  upon  foreign  stock, 
reserving  our  own  for  the  cultivation  of  our  lands 
and  the  manning  of  our  ships,  as  far  as  character  and 
circumstances  shall  incline.*  Stimulated  immigration 

*Page  34,  Taussig  reprint,  State  Papers  and  Speeches  on 
the  Tariff. 


34  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

since  the  very  beginnings  of  industry,  as  a  matter  of 
record,  has  tended  to  lower  what  have  ever  been  called 
the  high  wages  of  American  workers,  but  the  fact  of 
this  continuous  recruiting  for  the  industrial  armies, 
with  its  tendency  to  lower  wages,  strangely  enough 
has  been  ignored  when  tariff  protection  was  being 
sought  for  industry.  The  high  wages  of  American 
workers  were,  furthermore,  from  the  first,  frankly 
regarded  as  disadvantageous.  Protectionists  urged  the 
wage  scale  as  an  additional  reason  for  levying  high 
duties  on  imports.  The  motive  in  the  early  decades 
at  any  rate  was  not  to  make  possible  the  continuance 
of  high  wages  but  to  compensate  American  employers 
for  the  wages  which  they  were  compelled  to  pay. 

The  great  tariff  discussion  which  followed  the  War 
of  1812  occurred  before  manhood  suffrage  had  been 
widely  established.  There  was  accordingly  no  polit- 
ical pressure  to  induce  members  of  the  government 
to  act  in  the  interest  of  laborers.  During  the  tariff 
campaign  the  labor  argument  in  behalf  of  the  tariff 
took  two  distinct  forms.  The  tariff  was  urged  because 
of  the  unemployment  due  to  the  shut-down  of  certain 
mills,  and  it  was  also  advocated  in  order  to  compen- 
sate employers  for  the  high  wages  which  were  reputed 
to  be  paid.  "The  increasing  unemployment  following 
the  year  1816  and  culminating  in  the  great  crisis  of 
1819-20  gave  a  powerful  impulse  to  our  tariff  policy 
and  popularized  protection  in  many  parts  of  the  union," 
says  Mangold.*  Mathew  Carey,  who  was  one  of  the 
first  Americans  to  attempt  to  attract  public  attention 
to  the  condition  of  the  poor,  was  an  active  advocate 

*  "Labor  Argument  in  the  Protective  Tariff,"  page  29, 


The  Rise  of  Industry  35 

of  protective  tariffs.  After  1831  eastern  manufac- 
turers opposed  liberal  land  laws  in  order  to  prevent 
the  migration  westward  and  at  the  same  time  de- 
manded duties  on  imports  which  would  enable  them  to 
pay  the  wages  demanded  by  laborers  who  might  other- 
wise go  west.  After  1830 — about  the  time  when  labor- 
ers and  other  propertyless  men  began  to  vote — the  labor 
argument  of  the  tariff  advocates  changed  in  character. 
Less  was  said  about  compensating  employers  for  the 
high  wages  they  felt  impelled  to  pay.  The  unemploy- 
ment argument,  the  assertion  that  the  imposition  of 
import  duties  would  stimulate  employment,  was  re- 
newed. At  the  same  time  it  was  argued  that  the  pro- 
tective system  itself  tends  to  make  high  wages.*  This 
was  a  complete  change  of  front.  This  argument  cul- 
minated in  the  theory  that  tariffs  were  to  be  laid  in 
order  to  protect  the  American  workingman  from  the 
pauper  labor  of  Europe. 

In  connection  with  the  elaboration  of  the  labor 
argument  for  protective  tariffs  it  is  relevant  to  remem- 
ber that  an  immigration  policy  designed  to  overcome 
any  benefits  which  laboring  men  and  women  might 
have,  in  fact  obtained,  from  the  imposition  of  tariffs 
was  being  steadily  applied.  That  policy  was  the  stimu- 
lation of  immigration.  It  was  an  entirely  natural  ex- 
pression. There  was  an  actual  shortage  of  workers 
in  the  United  States.  Unsettled  lands  did  invite  human 
energy.  From  Hamilton  onward  the  leaders  of  the 
rising  industrial  interests  strove  to  increase  immigra- 
tion just  as  strenuously  as  they  sought  to  have  a  tariff 
wall  built  to  save  them  from  the  competition  of 

*  Op.  cit.,  page  70. 


36  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

Europe.  They  were  full  of  zest  in  keeping  out  the 
products  made  by  the  pauper  laborers  of  Europe,  and 
they  were  equally  enthusiastic  in  facilitating  the  im- 
portation of  these  pauper  laborers  themselves.  The 
reason  was  in  part  assuredly  to  be  found  in  their  belief 
that  immigration  would  tend  to  reduce  wages  to  a 
more  satisfactory  level.  John  Pickering  *  said  in 
1847: 

"If  the  working  classes  will  promote  the  'protective 
system/  their  first  object  should  be  to  prevent  the  impor- 
tation of  foreign  'pauper  operatives';  it  will  then  be 
time  enough  to  think  about  preventing  the  importation 
of  the  goods  they  make;  till  then  it  would  be  perfectly 
useless." 

The  labor  argument  in  the  tariff  was  an  interesting 
concession  to  the  times.  The  principle  of  protection 
itself,  a  principle  which  has  been  applied  in  varying 
degrees  but  without  interruption  from  the  very  birth 
of  the  republic  until  the  present,  reveals  clearly  the 
attitude  of  the  state  toward  industry  and  of  industry 
toward  the  state.  Consistently  throughout  the  history 
of  this  nation  the  owners  and  projectors  of  industry 
have  desired  public  aid  and  their  desire  has  ordinarily 
been  fulfilled.  To  a  great  extent  this  has  been  true  also 
\pi  transportation.  The  record  of  municipal,  county, 
state,  and  national  aid  to  railroad  building  is  a  litera- 
ture in  itself.  It  reaches  far  beyond  the  proper  con- 
fines of  this  study.  None  the  less,  it  shows  as  lucidly 
as  does  the  history  of  the  tariffs  how  willing  public 
authority  was  to  cooperate  in  construction  of  the  means 
of  transportation  as  an  aid  to  agriculture,  commerce 

*"The  Working  Man's  Political  Economy,"  page  150;  quoted 
by  Mangold,  page  101. 


The  Rise  of  Industry  37 

and  industry,  and  how  welcome  was  such  cooperation 
so  long  as  it  was  directed  to  the  assistance  of  the  priv- 
ate possessors  of  the  property. 

Since  the  cooperation  between  statesmen  and  the 
promoters  of  industry  has  been  historically  so  close 
it  is  important  to  examine  the  purposes  and  the  social 
ideals  of  those  who  were  the  founders  of  the  American 
manufactures.  What  has  been  the  historic  purpose 
of  statesmanship  in  this  respect,  and  what  were  the 
ideals  of  those  formative  years?  How  has  the  sub- 
sequent development  of  industry  been  influenced  by 
those  ideals?  First j)f_all, ^American  leaders  from  the 
very  outset  have  believed  that  f arniersjwere  the  back- 
bone o  f  'fHe_natJQjL.  Even  Hamilton  regarded  manu- 
factures as  a  supplementary  source  of  wealth.  "It 
ought  readily  to  be  conceded,"  he  wrote,*  "that  the 
cultivation  of  the  earth  as  the  primary  and  most  cer- 
tain source  of  national  supply;  as  the  immediate  and 
chief  source  of  subsistence  to  man;  as  the  principal 
source  of  those  materials  which  constitute  the  nutri- 
ment of  other  kinds  of  labor ;  as  including  a  state  most 
favorable  to  the  freedom  and  independence  of  the 
human  mind — one,  perhaps,  most  conducive  to  the 
multiplication  of  the  human  species;  has  intrinsically 
a  strong  claim  to  preeminence  over  every  other  kind 
of  industry." 

The  permanence  of  that  sentiment  in  American  life 
was  curiously  exhibited  when  the  Senate  Committee 
investigating  campaign  funds  in  1920  examined  certain 
industrial  leaders.  The  witnesses  naively  expressed  the 
opinions  that  farmers,  especially  Middle  Western 

*  American  State  Papers,  Finance  i,  123. 


Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

farmers,  were  the  best  Americans.  Tte^radition  of 
that^belief  runs  as  an  unbroken  strand  through  tKe 
texture  of  American  development.  It  has  had  far- 
-^leachjng  results.  One  of  thejirst  of  these  was  the 
,  principle  accepted  by  Hamilton/Tench  Coxe,  Gallatin, 
/and  others,  thatjnanufactures  were  subsidiary.  The 
I  labor  employed  wasTcTBe  that  of  women  and  child- 
'  ren,  immigrants,  and  the  sons  of  farmers  during  the 
frozen  winter.  "The  husbandman  himself,"  said  Ham- 
ilton, "experiences  a  new  source  of  profit  and  support 
from  the  increased  industry  of  his  wife  and  daughters, 
invited  and  stimulated  by  the  demands  of  the  neigh- 
boring manufactories."  Women  and  children,  par- 
ticularly those  of  a  tender  age,  were  to  be  recruited. 
Immigration,  attracted  by  manufactures,  would  in 
Hamilton's  words  be  "an  important  resource,  not  only 
for  extending  the  population,  and  with  it  the  useful 
and  productive  labor  of  the  country,  but  likewise  for 
the  prosecution  of  manufactures,  without  deducting 
from  the  number  of  hands  which  might  otherwise  be 
drawn  to  tillage;  and  even  for  the  indemnification  of 
agriculture  for  such  as  might  happen  to  be  diverted 
from  it."  The  importance  of  this  belief  that  industry 
was  to  be  treated  as  a  subsidiary  enterprise  in  the 
national  economy  developed  later.  Inadequate  wages, 
long  hours,  unwholesome'working  conditions,  devas- 
tated family  life,  bad  housing,  periodic  unemployment, 
were  in  part  made  immune  from  public  interference  by 
this  belief  that  agriculture  was  the  main  business  and 
industry  the  supplementary  avocation  of  American 
workers. 

The  belief  that  manufactures   were  subsidiary   to 


The  Rise  of  Industry  39 

farming  had  also  the  effect  of  imposing_the_  agricul-^ 
tural  system  of  labor  in  the  factories.  The  hours  of 
labor  were  from  sun  to  sun  in  agriculture.  It  was  ac- 
cordingly entirely  natural  to  establish  the  summer 
routine  of  the  farms  in  the  cotton  mills.  Mrs.  Harriet 
H.  Robinson,  one  of  the  young  women  who  worked 
at  Lowell  when  the  factory  system  was  getting  estab- 
lished in  this  country,  recorded  her  memories  in  a  paper 
published  in  1883  by  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Sta- 
tistics of  Labor.  Lowell  was  the  model  factory  town 
of  early  America,  and  yet  little  girls  not  over  ten  years 
of  age  there  worked  fourteen  and  fifteen  hours  daily. 
"The  working  hours  of  all  the  girls  extended  from  five 

o'clock  in  the  morning  until  seven  in  the  evening,  with 
one-half  hour  each  for  breakfast  and  dinner.  Even  the 
doffers  (the  youngest  children)  were  forced  to  be  on 
duty  nearly  fourteen  hours  a  day,"  said  Mrs.  Robin- 
son. On  occasion  the  working  day  was  lengthened 
until  eight,  nine  or  ten  o'clock  at  night  and  sometimes 

it  began  at  four  in  the  morning.  The  factory  girls 
came  from  New  England  farms.  They  returned  ordin- 
arily to  their  country  homes  where  similar  hours  pre- 
vailed. It  was  not  extraordinary,  therefore,  that  the 
farmers'  working  habits  should  have  been  adopted  by 
early  industry. 

Another  ideal  which  was  taken  over  bodily  was  the 
conception  of  personal  relationship  between  employer 
and  employes.  That  ideal  still  persists  in  many  places. 
It  was  valid  in  the  eighteenth  century.  The  apprentice 
system  was  never  elaborated  in  this  country  as  it  was 
in  England  and  in  Europe  generally,  but  none  the  less 
the  tradition  of  the  relation  between  apprentice  and 


4O  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

master  was  strong.  The  colonial  manufacturer  was  the 
mechanic  or  artizan  who  had  gathered  about  him  a  few 
journeymen  and  a  few  apprentices.  The  first  factories 
were  spinning  rooms.  These  establishments  were  de- 
signed to  utilize  the  energies  of  petty  offenders  or  to 
instruct  children  in  the  textile  arts.  The  remaining 
records  of  apprentices  always  portray  relationships 
which  were  intimate  and  personal  even  though  they 
were  not  always  pleasant  and  just.  Following  the  ex- 
ample of  Arkwright  and  Strutt  in  England,  whom  he 
had  served  as  an  apprentice,  Samuel  Slater,  the  founder 
of  cotton  manufactures  in  the  United  States,  estab- 
lished Sabbath  schools  for  the  moral  instruction  of  his 
employes.  The  rules  and  regulations  in  the  Lowell 
factories  are  suggestive  of  the  regime  of  girls'  board- 
ing schools  of  the  time.  Board  and  lodging  and  cloth- 
ing were  the  pay  of  the  apprentice  who  was  content 
to  work  because  of  the  instruction  he  obtained.  Simi- 
larly the  first  factory  workers  were  given  their  board 
and  lodging  by  many  employers. 

Long  hours  of  labor  and  the  employment  of  women 
and  children  were  accepted  because  of  the  general  be- 
lief in  the  virtuous  discipline  of  steady  toil.  Yet  the 
establishment  of  manufactures  was  sought  also  because 
of  the  labor-saving  potentiality  of  machinery.  A 
sparsely  settled  country  needed  the  application  of  labor. 
Mechanical  industry  promised  to  save  labor.  The 
advocate  of  manufactures  accordingly  delighted  to 
calculate  the  savings  which  would  result  from  the  use 
of  machinery.  In  contrast  with  hand  processes  the 
burden  of  watching  the  machine  seemed  light.  Of 
the  number  employed  in  the  British  cotton  industries 


The  Rise  of  Industry  41 

Hamilton  noted  that  four-sevenths  were  women  and 
children,  that  the  greater  portion  of  these  were  chil- 
dren, and  that  the  majority  of  the  children  were  of  a 
tender  age.  The  textile  machines  seemed  so  great  a 
liberator  of  mankind  from  the  curse  of  toil  that  only 
the  strength  of  infants  was  thought  to  be  required 
to  perform  the  work  of  men  and  women.  That  idea 
was  carried  on.  In  1810  Albert  Gallatin,  the  brilliant 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  again  reported  to  Congress 
on  the  state  of  American  manufactures.  At  that  time  he 
was  compelled  still  to  report  that  by  far  the  greater 
part  of  goods  made  of  cotton,  flax  and  wool  in  the 
United  States  "are  manufactured  in  private  families, 
mostly  for  their  own  use  and  partly  for  sale."  Tench 
Coxe,  the  most  active  advocate  for  the  establishment 
of  manufactures  in  the  United  States,  calculated  in 
1814  that  58,000  operatives  could  spin  the  entire 
amount  of  cotton  then  exported  from  the  United 
States.  With  machinery  Coxe  reckoned  that  only  one- 
eighth  of  this  working  force  need  be  adult  males,*  the 
remaining  seven-eighths  women  and  children.  One 
hundred  thousand  women  working  on  a  half -day 
schedule  could  weave  this  cotton.  It  could  be  printed 
by  about  60,000  men  and  children.  The  labor  of 
210,000  persons,  chiefly  women  and  children,  could  by 
the  subtlety  of  machines  increase  the  value  of  this  ex- 
port cotton  from  eight  or  nine  million  dollars  to  sev- 
enty-five million  dollars.  Coxe  reported  that  the  dim- 
inution of  manual  labor  in  Great  Britain  by  means  of 
machinery  in  the  cotton  business  was  estimated  at  200 
to  I  in  1808.  He,  pioneer  leader  that  he  was,  with  the 
*  American  State  Papers,  Finance  2,  669. 


42  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

enthusiasm  of  a  crusader  in  advocating  industry, 
described  "wonderful  machines  working  as  if  they  were 
animated  beings,  endowed  with  all  the  talents  of  their 
inventors,  laboring  with  organs  that  never  tire  and  sub- 
ject to  no  expense  of  food  or  bed  or  raiment  or  dwel- 
ling," which  "may  justly  be  considered  as  equivalent 
to  an  immense  body  of  manufacturing  recruits,  enlisted 
in  the  service  of  the  country."  It  was  estimated  that 
a  hand-wheel  spinner  could  produce  about  four  skeins  a 
day  in  1800.  In  1815  a  mule  spinner  could  attend  to 
about  90  spindles,  which  produced  daily  180  skeins. 
Twenty  years  later  each  mule  spinner  watched  200 
spindles,  each  of  which  turned  out  as  many  as  eight  and 
one-half  skeins  daily.* 

Fundamental  to  the  entire  movement  which  sought 
the  governmental  nurture  of  industry  was  finally  an 
admirable  desire  to  enable  the  American  people  to  fab- 
ricate comforts  and  luxuries  for  themselves  and  ren- 
der the  nation  self-sustaining.  Simple  men  as  well 
as  the  great  leaders  whose  names  have  become  historic 
united  in  this  enterprise.  Among  the  group  of  Boston 
merchants  who  petitioned  Congress  for  protection  on 
June  5,  1789,  were  spokesmen  of  wheelwrights,  black- 
smiths, rope-makers,  hatters,  pewterers,  soap-boilers 
and  tallow-chandlers,  wool  cardmakers,  ship  carvers, 
sail-makers,  cabinet  makers,  coach  makers,  tailors, 
cordwainers,  glue  and  starch  makers,  brass  founders 
and  coppersmiths.  These  men  had  the  vision  of  nation 
builders.  They  lived  at  a  time  when  a  new  and  revo- 
lutionary era  in  human  history  was  unfolding  and  they 

*  "History  of  Manufactures  in  the  United  States,"  page  432. 
House  Doc.  146,  24  Congress,  I  Session,  page  52. 


The  Rise  of  Industry  43 

desired  ardently  to  see  the  great  forces  which  invention 
promised  set  to  work  in  the  service  of  their  country. 
Political  traditions  they  had  broken.  Social  stratifica- 
tion they  were  beginning  to  challenge.  In  the  midst 
of  these  two  revolutions,  political  and  social,  came  the 
prospect  of  even  deeper  changes  in  the  productive  life 
of  the  new  nation.  The  power  which  the  new  industry 
proffered  early  Americans  eagerly  sought  and  attained. 
The  consequences  which  followed,  the  manner  in  which 
human  welfare  was  affected  by  the  machine  era,  must 
now  be  considered. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  avowed  purpose  of  Congress  in  stimulating  the 
.development  of  manufactures  was  to  add  to  the 
national  prosperity.  Variegated  industry,  it  was 
thought,  would  render  the  country  independent  of 
foreign  nations  for  military  and  other  essential  sup- 
plies. At  the  same  time,  through  the  division  of  labor 
and  the  use  of  mechanical  power,  the  total  sum  of 
national  wealth  would  be  vastly  increased.  The  fore- 
casts of  the  early  advocates  of  manufactures  have  been 
abundantly  fulfilled  in  this  respect.  By  many  tests 
an  enormous  multiplication  of  national  wealth  and 
productivity  has  been  shown.  Tench  Coxe  in  1812 
estimated  the  value  of  all  the  manufactures  of  the 
United  States  at  $172,762,676.*  In  1919  the  value  of 
American  manufactured  products  was  placed  at  more 
than  sixty-two  billions,  f  Within  that  107  years  the 
value  of  the  products  of  American  industrial  estab- 
lishments had  thus  been  increased  approximately  three 
hundred  and  sixty  fold,  while  the  population  had  in- 
creased sixteen  fold.  The  value  of  manufactures  had 
accordingly  been  augmented  more  than  twenty  times 
as  rapidly  as  had  the  population.  None  of  the  bold 

*  "Digest  of  Manufactures,"  page  676. 

t  "Census  of  Manufactures,"  Press  Release,  May  24,  1921. 


The  Worker's  Family  45 

promoters  of  a  century  ago  dared  dream  of  such  a 
growth.  The  actual  material  achievement  of  American 
industry  has  surpassed  enormously  the  wildest  hopes 
of  the  forefathers. 

How  has  this  great  augmentation  of  national  pro- 
duction, and  how,  in  particular,  have  the  various  in- 
dustries through  which  this  new  wealth  is  produced, 
affected  the  working  class  family?  It  has  been  cus- 
tomary, first  of  all,  to  accuse  manufacturing  industry 
of  having  broken  down  the  worker's  home  by  taking 
women  and  children  out  of  it.  The  charge  is  only  in 
part  justified.  Women  and_children  worked  *  long 
before  the  steam  engine  was  invented  although  work  in 
the  "home  was  very  different  from  the  later  service_jn^ 
factories.  In  fact  it  has  been  said  that  during  the 
seventeenth  century  English  women  provided  clothes 
and  food  for  the  family  while  the  men  supplied  shel- 
ter. Every  member  of  the  American  artizan  or  farmer 
family  was  busily  employed.  A  farmer  complaining 
of  the  extravagance  and  waste  of  the  times  wrote  a 
letter  which  was  published  in  the  Connecticut  Courant 
of  August  1 8,  1788.  He  was  born  poor  and  became 
rich.  In  recounting  the  vicissitudes  of  his  own  life 
he  painted  a  picture  which  has  been  considered  typical 
of  the  age  and  region.  He  recalled : 

"My  parents  were  poor  and  they  put  me  at  twelve 
years  of  age  to  a  farmer  with  whom  I  lived  until  I  was 
twenty-one.  My  master  fitted  me  off  with  two  suits  of 
homespun,  four  woolen  shirts  and  two  pair  of  shoes. 
At  twenty-two  I  married  me  a  wife,  and  a  very  good 
young  woman  she  was.  We  took  a  farm  of  forty  acres 
on  rent.  By  industry  we  got  ahead  fast.  I  married  my 

*  "Women  in  Industry,"  by  Edith  Abbott. 


46  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

eldest  daughter  to  a  clever  lad  to  whom  I  gave  one 
hundred  acres  of  my  out  land.  This  daughter  had  been 
a  working,  dutiful  girl,  and  therefore  I  fitted  her  out 
well  and  to  her  mind:  for  I  told  her  to  take  the  best 
of  my  wool  and  flax  and  to  spin  herself  gowns,  coats, 
stockings  and  shifts — nay,  I  suffered  her  to  buy  some 
cotton  and  to  make  into  sheets  as  I  was  determined  to 
do  well  by  her.  At  this  time  my  farm  gave  me  and  my 
whole  family  a  good  living  on  the  produce  of  it  and  left 
me  one  year  with  another  one  hundred  and  fifty  silver 
dollars,  for  I  never  spent  more  than  ten  dollars  a  year 
which  was  for  salt,  nails  and  the  like.  Nothing  to  wear, 
eat  or  drink  was  purchased  as  my  farm  provided  all — 
with  this  saving  I  put  my  money  to  interest,  bought 
cattle,  fatted  and  sold  them  and  made  great  profit." 

Prosperity  led  this  particular  family  into  what  the 
farmer  deemed  luxury  and  also  into  extravagance  and 
debt,  whither  it  is  unnecessary  to  follow  them.  The 
system  of  work  in  which  all  participated,  even  the  very 
young  children,  was,  however,  well  nigh  universal 
throughout  New  England  and  the  Middle  Atlantic 
States.  All  were  expected  to  work.  Industry  was, 
in  fact,  the  only  school  open  to  the  great  majority  of 
the  population.  It  was  universally  deemed  to  be  the 
best  influence  in  the  formation  of  character.  Boys 
and  girls  for  the  good  of  their  souls,  as  well  as  for 
the  profit  of  their  parents,  were  put  to  work  almost  as 
soon  as  they  passed  the  frontier  of  infancy.  Little  girls 
of  six  and  seven  and  younger  began  the  tasks — theirs 
for  life — of  spinning  wool  and  flax  and  cotton.*  A 
Massachusetts  law  of  1642  provided  that  children  who 
tended  cattle  "be  set  to  some  other  employment  withal, 
as  spinning  upon  the  rock,  knitting,  weaving  tape,  etc." 
Portable  hand  looms  were  taken  into  the  pastures  by 
the  boys  and  girls  in  order  that  their  small  hands  might 

*"The  Family  as  a  Social  and  Educational  Institution,"  by 
Willystine  Goodsell,  page  401, 


The  Worker's  Family  47 

be  kept  busy.  Boys  wove  garters  and  suspenders  on 
tape  looms  while  girls  assisted  in  the  gardens.  Both 
boys  and  girls  were  apprenticed,  although  the  appren- 
tice system  was  never  so  common  in  the  colonies  as  it 
was  in  England.  A  "Spinning  School  House"  was 
established  in  Boston  in  1720  for  the  purpose  of  teach- 
ing the  art  to  children  of  the  poor.  Some  masters 
seem  to  have  regarded  apprenticed  children  lightly,  as 
may  be  gleaned  from  the  following  advertisement 
which  appeared  in  the  Connecticut  C  our  ant : 

"Run  away  from  the  subscriber  on  the  evening  of  the 
thirteenth  of  this  instant  July,  an  apprentice  boy  about 
17  years  old  and  about  five  feet  high :  said  boy  did  belong 
to  New  Haven,  named  Elisha  Turner.  Who  will  take  up 
said  boy  and  return  him  to  his  master  shall  have  two 
pence  reward  and  no  charges  paid  by 

SAMUEL  CLARK, 
Winchester,  July  28,  1788." 

Under  the  system  of  domestic  industry  practically 
all  textiles  were  spun  and  woven  by  women  and  chil- 
dren. Historically  spinning  and  weaving  and  the  mak- 
ing of  clothes  were  duties  which  women,  their 
children,  and  their  servants,  where  servants  were 
available,  had  generally  performed,  [ghe  first  factories 
thus  were^competitors  of  the  family  manufacturers. 
WEenTench  Coxe  prepared  the  Digest  of  Manufac- 
tures for  1810  *  home  production  was  seen  to  exceed 
the  output  in  manufacturing  establishments  enor- 
mously. For  every  yard  of  cotton  made  in  a  factory 
upwards  of  112  yards  were  fabricated  by  families  in 
1810.  Wool  showed  similar  conditions.  More  than 
nine  and  a  half  million  yards  were  woven  in  families, 

*  American  State  Papers :  Finance  2 :  690  and  following. 


48  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

while  only  some  seventy-one  thousand  yards  were 
turned  out  by  the  twenty-three  woolen  factories  re- 
ported in  the  1810  census.  The  disproportion  was 
overwhelming.  It  was  entirely  to  be  expected,  there- 
fore, that  the  ambitious  promoters  of  manufactures 
should  have  accepted  industrial  conditions  as  they 
found  them.  Women  and  children  had  been  employed 
in  the  fabrication  of  cloths.  The  invention  of  power 
looms,  the  utilization  of  water  power  first  and  later 
of  steam,  appeared  to  render  far  more  facile  the  work 
they  had  traditionally  performed.  Machinery  seemed 
at  first  sight  to  make  things  very  easy  of  accomplish- 
ment— to  lighten  their  historic  burden  and  not  to  im- 
pose new  duties.  The  textile  factories  were,  moreover, 
the  pioneer  manufactures.  The  conditions  which 
obtained  in  them,  conditions  sanctioned  by  immemorial 
usage  in  domestic  life,  were  extended  generally  into 
industry.  As  factories  grew  in  number  and  importance 
women  and  children  left  the  home  for  new  industrial 
duties. 

(Work  in  factories  was  not,  however,  like  that  of 
homes.  This  was  clearly  seen  by  a  few  in  England, 
and  Americans  who  advocated  the  establishment  of 
manufactures  had  to  defend  the  project  against 
charges  that  such  work  was  demoralizing.  Tench 
Coxe  took  up  the  imputation  and  in  reply  said  :* 

"Opinions  have  been  advanced  in  some  countries  un- 
favorable to  the  morals  of  the  manufacturers.  But  it 
does  not  appear  that  there  is  more  vice  among  the 
description  of  persons  indicated  in  the  preceding  para- 
graph than  in  some  other  extensive  classes  of  our  popu- 
lation. .  .  .  The  system  adopted  at  Humphreysville,  in 

*  "Digest  of  Manufactures,"  page  689. 


The  Worker's  Family  49 

Conaecticut,  with  respect  to  education,  manners,  disci- 
pline, morals  and  religion,  is  an  interesting  evidence  that 
the  people  of  the  United  States  may  quicken  and  increase 
the  virtues  of  the  rising  generation,  and  reform  the 
degenerate  of  later  years  by  a  humane  and  politic  system 
in  the  large  manufactories.  It  may  correctly  be  observed 
that  while  no  commotions  have  dishonored  the  reputation 
of  manufacturers  in  this  country,  from  this  class  of  our 
citizens  there  have  arisen  Nathaniel  Greene,  Benjamin 
Franklin,  and  David  Rittenhouse,  respectfully  conceived 
to  be  comparable  without  disadvantage  to  their  respective 
memories  and  to  their  manufacturing  brethren  with  any 
equal  number  of  ornaments  and  benefactors  to  their 
country  of  any  other  single  profession  or  occupation. 
The  field  of  manufacturers,  represented  in  other  parts 
of  the  world,  to  be  fruitful  in  mischief  and  turbulence, 
has  produced  here  a  body  of  firm  supporters  of  our 
constitutions  and  laws  and  the  most  respectable  examples 
of  civic  virtues." 

But  beyond  the  vague  suspicion  that  factory  life 
made  for  loose  morals,  there  was  hardly  a  trace  of  un- 
easiness concerning  the  effects  of  industry  on  the  wel- 
fare of  the  people.  No  question  of  health,  of  fatigue, 
of  compensation  for  accidents  or  unemployment,  of 
control,  of  a  possible  rift  between  classes,  seems  to  have 
occurred  to  the  inaugnrators  of  the  industrial  system. 
Early  American  promoters  of  industry  were  concerned 
chiefly  about  increasing  the  resources  of  the  country. 
Children  were  means  to  this  end.  How  fully  absorbed 
the  nation  was  in  acquiring  wealth  is  shown  by  an 
ingenious  estimate  of  the  value  of  the  unused  child 
labor,  similar  to  that  made  by  Sir  William  Petty  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  This  was  published  in  Nilesf 
Weekly  Register  on  October  5,  1816.  The  corres- 
pondent calculated  for  one  town  that  the  value  of  200 
unemployed  children  between  seven  and  sixteen  years 
old,  working  45  weeks  a  year,  would  be  $13,500.  Chil- 
dren were  rated  at  from  $1.25  to  $2  a  week.  The 


50  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

computation  was  carried  out  for  the  nation.  It  was 
reckoned  that  there  were  then  317,000  children  whose 
time  was  not  fully  employed  and  who  might  be  utilized 
in  textile  industries.  The  employment  of  all  these 
children  would,  however,  call  for  the  establishment 
of  factories  with  nearly  8,000,000  cotton  spindles — a 
plan  too  large  to  seem  immediately  attainable  to  this 
enthusiastic  estimator  of  the  unharnessed  energies  of 
the  nation's  children. 

These  promoters  had  the  same  attitude  toward  un- 
employed children  that  later  Americans  have  expressed 
toward  unutilized  water  power.  Both  thought  that  a 
great  material  resource  was  being  wasted.  The  earlier 
generation  failed  as  completely  to  sense  the  needs  of 
childhood  as  did  its  successor,  when  brought  face  to 
face  with  the  problem  of  natural  resources,  seem  un- 
able to  understand  the  value  of  beauty  and  of  fore- 
sight for  future  generations.  The  failure  to  appre- 
ciate the  necessities  of  children  was,  however,  in  char- 
acter with  the  times.  Thus  citizens  living  on  the 
Brandy  wine  remarked  in  1815,  in  a  petition  to  Con- 
gress, that  "More  than  eight-tenths  of  the  persons 
employed  in  the  manufactories  in  the  United  States 
are  women  and  children,  by  which  the  latter  are  earlier 
trained  to  industrious  habits  than  they  would  other- 
wise be."* 

During  the  formative  years  of  industry  few  dis- 
puted the  propriety  of  employing  children.  Samuel 
Slater,  the  pioneer  of  the  American  textile  industry, 
started  in  Rhode  Island  the  English  custom  of  employ- 

*  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  6:28;  Senate  Docu- 
ment, 6ist  Congress,  Second  Session,  No.  645. 


The  Worker's  Family  S1 

ing  entire  families  in  his  mills.*    The  first  records  of 
the  Slater  mill  mention  prominently  the  names  of  four 
small  lads.     The  letter  of  one  of  the  early  operatives 
who  began  work  himself  at  ten  years  of  age  indicates 
that  during  1790  and  1791  the  operatives  in  the  first 
cotton  mill  were  almost  exclusively  children  of  from 
seven  to  twelve  years  of  age.    The  Committee  on  Man- 
ufactures in  1816  estimated  that  24,000  boys  under 
seventeen  and  66,000  women  and  girls  were  included 
in  the  total  calculation  of  100,000  operatives  in  cotton 
mills. f    A  considerable  period  of  time  elapsed  before  \ 
there  was  any  general  recognition  of  the  menace  of  ; 
child  labor.    The  principle  that  work  was  the  "mother  ,- 
of  virtue"  was  deeply  rooted.     So  prevalent  was  this  j 
idea  that  free  traders  such  as  Condy  Raguet  were  com- 
pelled to  argue  that  there  was  work  enough  for  children 
in  agriculture.^ 

The  first  recorded  stirring  came  in  Rhode  Island, 
where  the  employment  of  children  was  most  exten- 
sive. In  his  message  to  the  legislature  in  1818  the  / 
governor  called  attention  to  the  need  of  educating  | 
factory  children.  "It  is  a  lamentable  truth,"  said  he, 
"that  too  many  of  the  living  generation,  who  are 
obliged  to  labor  in  those  works  of  almost  unceasing 
application  and  industry,  are  growing  up  without  an 
opportunity  of  obtaining  that  education  which  is  neces- 
sary for  their  personal  welfare  as  well  as  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  whole  community."  A  resolution  provid- 
ing for  the  establishment  of  schools  for  the  benefit  of 

*  "Women  in  Industry,"  page  338. 

t  "The  Textile  Industries  of  the  United  States,"  page  159. 

t  'Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  6,  page  29. 


52  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

the  2,500  children  between  the  ages  of  seven  and  four- 
teen employed  in  Rhode  Island  factories  was  reported 
in  1824  by  Tristan  Burges,  who  proposed  to  make  the 
employers  bear  the  expense  of  the  schools.  The  reso- 
lution failed.*  Massachusetts  first  made  a  state  inves- 
tigation. A  joint  committee  of  the  legislature  was 
ordered  on  January  14,  1825,  to  report  on  the  exped- 
iency of  establishing  a  system  of  education  for  children 
employed  in  factories.  The  committee  reported  that 
it  was  inexpedient,  but  suggested  an  investigation.  Al- 
though manufacturers  were  still  petitioning  for  public 
aid  whenever  they  desired  it,  the  notion  of  the  impro- 
priety of  governmental  intervention  in  behalf  of  any 
class  other  than  the  owners  of  industry  was  so  strong 
that  the  selectmen  were  instructed  to  investigate  only 
child  labor  found  in  "incorporated  manufacturing 
companies."  The  dislike  of  corporations  then  gen- 
eral, and  too,  the  legal  fact  that  the  corporation  was  a 
creature  of  the  state,  were  sufficient  to  bring  them 
within  the  scope  of  the  inquiry,  although  unincorpor- 
ated manufacturers  escaped.  The  legislature  was 
subsequently  informed  that  the  boys  and  girls  investi- 
gated worked  twelve  or  thirteen  hours  a  day,  a  system 
by  which  they  have  "little  opportunity  for  daily  in- 
struction." Not  until  1842,  however,  was  Massachu- 
setts willing  to  pass  a  school  law,  the  first  legislative 
milestone  in  the  history  of  the  liberation  of  American 
childhood. 

For  a  long  time  the  children  continued  to  take  a 
very  important  part  in  American  industry.     Pennsyl- 
vania in  1848  passed  the  first  law  forbidding  children 
*  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  i,  6:31. 


The  Worker's  Family  53 

under  twelve  years  old  to  work  in  cotton,  woolen,  silk, 
and  flax  factories.*  The  law  also  pronounced  ten 
hours  to  be  the  legal  working  day  in  such  industries. 
But  children  over  ten  years  old  could  be  employed 
longer  than  ten  hours,  if  special  contracts  were  made 
with  their  parents.  Moreover,  no  proof  of  the  age  of 
the  child  workers  was  required.  When  the  law  went 
into  effect  manufacturers  in  the  vicinity  of  Pittsburgh 
stated  that  the  ten-hour  working  day  would  be  ruin- 
ous to  them  so  long  as  manufacturers  in  other  states 
had  a  twelve-hour  day.f  A  strike  ensued,  participated 
in  by  children,  lasting  from  July  4  to  August  28,  at  the 
end  of  which  time  it  was  settled,  the  employees  winning 
their  legal  ten-hour  day  but  losing  sixteen  per  cent 
in  their  wages.  In  the  course  of  the  strike  a  number 
of  girls  were  arrested  for  riots.  One  of  them,  a  child 
of  thirteen,  was  sent  to  jail  for  want  of  bail.  Thir- 
teen girls  were  found  guilty  and  four  were  acquitted.  J 
Before  Pennsylvania  forbade  the  employment  of  chil- 
dren under  twelve  at  work  in  these  textile  mills,  laws 
had  been  passed  in  other  states  limiting  the  hours  of 
child  labor.  Connecticut  in  1842  had  forbidden  chil- 
dren under  fourteen  years  old  to  work  more  than  ten 
hours  a  day  in  cotton  and  woolen  factories,  and  the 
same  year  Massachusetts  had  prohibited  children  under 
twelve  from  working  more  than  ten  hours  a  day  in 
any  manufacturing  industry. 

But  in  none  of  the  earlier  laws  was  a  special  method 

*  Op.  dt .,  6 :  207. 

t  J.  Lynn  Barnard,  "Factory  Legislation  in  Pennsylvania," 
University  of  Pennsylvania  Publications,  Political  Economy  No. 
19,  page  20. 

$  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  6,  page  124. 


54  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

of  enforcement  provided.  In  consequence,  as  later 
inquiry  showed,  the  laws  intended  to  limit  the  hours  of 
child  labor  and  to  keep  children  out  of  factories  seldom 
served  their  purpose.  The  most  effectual  of  the  early 
efforts  in  behalf  of  children  were  the  school  laws.  In 
these  Massachusetts  was  the  pioneer  and  other  indus- 
trial states  followed.  The  first  act  of  this  character 
was  the  Massachusetts  Statute  of  1836,  which  pro- 
vided that  children  under  fifteen  years  old  must  at- 
tend school  three  months  out  of  twelve.  Here  again, 
however,  no  special  means  of  enforcement  were  pro- 
vided and  in  consequence  the  school  laws  were  only 
partially  enforced.  The  report  of  the  Massachusetts 
Labor  Commission  in  1866  gives  conclusive  and  strik- 
ing evidence  on  this  point.  Edward  Harris  of  Woon- 
socket,  according  to  the  report  made  to  the  legislature, 
"desires  to  call  attention  to  the  labor  of  children  in 
the  mills.  Represents  that,  from  eight  years  old  and 
upwards,  they  work  full  time — rise  at  four  and  a  half 
a.m.,  having  thirty  minutes  for  breakfast,  forty-five 
minutes  at  dinner,  and  leave  work  at  seven  p.m.,  four- 
teen and  a  half  hours.  Thinks  manufacturers  in  Mas- 
sachusetts and  in  Rhode  Island  pay  little  regard  to  the 
law  respecting  the  employment  of  children."  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  he  belonged  to  the  manufacturers' 
group,  Mr.  Harris  held  that  a  ten-hour  law  for  women 
and  children,  enforced  with  penalties,  would  increase 
the  intelligence  of  the  community.  Another  spokes- 
man of  the  manufacturers  urged  that  if  the  hours  of 
labor  were  reduced,  manufacturers  would  leave  the 
state.  This  gentleman,  J.  E.  Carver,  of  Bridgewater, 
was  certain  also  that  the  workers  would  suffer  if  the 


The  Worker's  Family  55 

hours  were  reduced.  "No  legislation/'  said  he,  "can 
make  his  receipts  for  eight  hours  more  than  four-fifths 
of  what  they  would  be  for  ten  hours."  A  different 
view  of  the  power  of  politics  to  control  prices  was  ex- 
pressed, however,  when  the  manufacturers  sought  the 
protection  of  friendly  import  duties  in  order  that  they 
might  escape  foreign  competition. 

Vivid  pictures  of  the  customary  effects  of  early  child 
labor  were  given  by  witnesses  from  industrial  towns 
to  the  commission.  T.  J.  Kidd,  of  Fall  River,  testi- 
fied in  part  as  follows : 

"Question :  Was  there  any  one  who  ever  tried  to  cause 
the  children  to  be  sent  to  school  ? 

Answer:    Not  since  old  man  Robeson  died. 

Question:  Why  do  not  the  parents  send  them  to 
school  ? 

Answer:  Small  help  is  scarce;  a  great  deal  of  the 
machinery  has  been  stopped  for  want  of  small  help,  so 
the  overseers  have  been  going  around  to  draw  the  small 
children  from  the  schools  into  the  mills;  the  same  as  a 
draft  in  the  army." 

John  Wild,  also  of  Fall  River,  threw  light  on  the 
child  labor  situation  as  it  existed  in  Massachusetts  the 
year  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War.  Wild  testi- 
fied that  children  seven  years  old  were  employed  in  the 
mill.  His  own  children  worked  because  his  earnings 
were  not  sufficient  to  support  the  family.  Said  he  to 
the  Labor  Commission: 

"I  don't  know  that  I  have  any  more  to  say,  except 
that  I  have  two  little  boys,  one  eleven  and  the  other  about 
eight  and  a  half.  I  am  no  scholar  myself  because  I  have 
always  been  working  in  the  mill,  and  I  am  sorry  for  it. 
I  don't  want  my  children  to  be  brought  up  the  same  way. 
I  wish  to  get  them  to  work  a  little  less  hours  so  that  I 
can  send  them  to  night  school.  I  want,  if  it  is  possible, 
to  get  a  law  so  that  they  can  go  to  school  and  know 
how  to  read  and  write  their  own  names." 


56  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

During  the  half  century  prior  to  the  close  of  the 
Civil  War  the  system  of  child  labor  was  fully  devel- 
oped. Not  until  after  the  Civil  War  was  child  labor  ef- 

.   fectually  challenged  in  this  country.    Even  to-day  the 

"""evil  is  not  remedied.  It  is  the  opinion  of  many  that 
conditions  in  this  country  never  became  so  serious 
as  they  were  in  Great  Britain,  which  however,  it  is 
fair  to  say,  began  earlier  and  worked  with  more  vigor 
and  intelligence  in  eradicating  the  evil  than  have  the  not 
always  United  States.  Before  it  was  possible  to  liber- 
ate children  from  the  burden  of  factory  labor,  society 

*  had  to  be  slowly  enlightened.  The  old  Puritan  prin- 
.  ciple  that  work  is  the  mother  of  virtue  had  to  be  modi- 
fied by  a  new  passion  for  learning  and  for  the  liberty 
which  workingmen  believed  during  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  could  only  be  attained  by  an  edu- 

^cated  generation.  Many  good  and  some  great  citizens 
served  the  republic  well  in  this  long  struggle.  Not 
least  powerful  was  Horace  Mann,  who  as  secretary  of 
the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Education  came  boldly  to 
plead  the  cause  of  the  children.  Mann  declared  in  his 
report  for  1848  that  "those  who  employ  other  people's 
children  for  profit  could  not  entrench  themselves  be- 
hind the  sacredness  of  parental  rights.  Their  object 
is  their  own  personal  gain,  a  lawful  and  laudable  ob- 
ject, it  is  true,  but  one  which  cannot  sanction  for  a 
moment  the  infliction  of  a  positive  injury  upon  any 
child,  or  the  deprivation  of  any  privilege  essential  either 
to  his  well-being  or  to  the  permanence  and  prosperity  of 
the  state."  The  pioneer  educator  asked:  "How  can 
any  man  seek  to  enlarge  his  own  gains  or  to  pamper 
his  own  luxurious  habits,  by  taking  the  bread  of  intel- 


The  Worker's  Family  57 

lectual  and  moral  life  from  the  children  around  him?"* 
The  answer  to  Horace  Mann's  appeal  was  made  by 
many  and  it  has  been  repeated  down  to  the  present  gen- 
eration. The  first  and  most  important  response  to  a 
demand  for  the  protection  of  children  has  usually 
been  that  the  manufacturers  did  not  desire  it.  The 
early  Massachusetts  legislators  found  it  " inexpedient'* 
to  pass  school  laws,  and  three-quarters  of  a  century 
later  and  more  the  legislators  of  North  Carolina  were 
finding  the  opposition  of  cotton  manufacturers  an  in- 
surmountable obstacle  to  the  passage  of  adequate  childv 
labor  laws.  The  state  has  no  right  to  interfere  with) 
private  business,  it  has  ever  been  argued  by  textiley 
manufacturers.  A  North  Carolina  manufacturer  said 
in  1905,  when  one  of  the  losing  fights  for  a  child  labor 
law  was  made,  that  it  was  an  insult  to  manufacturers 
to  take  the  management  of  their  property  away  and 
vest  it  in  the  superintendent  of  schools.  The  law  pro- 
vided that  no  boy  under  twelve  and  no  girl  under  four- 
teen should  work  in  the  mills.  A  boy  under  fourteen 
was  excluded  from  the  factories  unless  he  could  read 
and  write.  The  superintendent  of  schools  was  author- 
ized to  approve  the  school  certificates.  That  was  what 
the  manufacturer  meant  when  he  said  the  bill  "takes 
the  management  of  their  property  out  of  their  hands 
and  puts  it  in  the  hands  of  the  county  superintendent 
of  education,  who  knows  as  much  concerning  the  needs 
or  the  best  interests  of  a  factory  as  a  billy  goat  knows 
about  fishing."  A  veritable  fury  of  opposition  has 
contested  the  progress  of  public  control  over  child 
labor.  Public  interference,  north,  west  and  south,  has 
*  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  6,  page  72. 


58  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

been  unfailingly  resented  as  an  unwarranted  intrusion 
on  the  part  of  the  government  by  the  very  men  who 
have  consistently  sought  governmental  interference 
whenever  public  aid  seemed  to  promise  nourishment  for 
their  profits. 

During  the  early  decades  the  campaigns  to  take 
children  out  of  factories  found  success  when  based  on 
a  demand  for  education  and  on  a  demand  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  health  of  the  future  citizen.  Broadly 
speaking,  that  is  still  true.  The  great  sanction  of  laws 
preventing  the  premature  employment  of  children  lies 
in  the  now  acknowledged  duty  of  society  to  coming 
generations.  The  state  cannot  permit  the  health  of 
children  to  be  dwarfed  by  toil  during  years  when  growth 
is  the  normal  function.  Nor  can  the  state  allow  the 
next  generation  of  citizens  to  grow  up  unschooled  and 
in  ignorance.  These  two  principles  have  the  approval 
of  all  except  those  who  desire  to  exploit  the  energies 
of  the  young,  and  this  is  now  a  minority  which  decade 
by  decade  becomes  less  potent.  A  further  principle, 
the  right  of  the  child  to  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  is 
now  reinforcing  the  older  doctrines.  It  is  now  known 
that  children — like  their  elders — will  play;  and  woe 
betide  that  society  or  that  community  which  suffers 
the  natural  impulses  of  youth  to  be  thwarted  by  indus- 
try or  by  any  other  artificial  barriers.  In  any  adequate 
consideration  of  the  effects  of  industry  upon  human 
welfare,  however  brief,  this  factor  should  be  taken 
into  account.  For,  besides  drafting  the  juvenile 
energies  of  the  nation  as  into  an  army,  industry  has 
in  many  places  taken  away  most  of  the  natural  oppor- 
tunities for  play,  even  among  those  children  who  are 


The  Workers  Family  59 

not  absorbed  into  factories  and  mills.  This  state  of 
affairs  is  apparent  in  any  industrial  city.  It  is  most 
obvious  in  the  working  class  quarters  of  larger  munici- 
palities. In  the  congested  districts  of  New  York  City, 
for  example,  little  children  learn  while  they  are  still 
toddling  infants  to  gamble  upon  the  streets.  Because 
they  have  no  normal  outlets  for  their  play  energies* 
they  are  driven  to  abnormality.  When  the  full  ac- 
counting of  what  industry  has  done  to  childhood  is 
made,  these  things  which  have  such  great  consequences 
in  the  wasting  of  opportunities  for  sound  development 
and  in  the  stimulation  of  criminal  tendencies  must  not 
be  forgotten. 

Child  labor  is  not  an  obsolete  issue.  In  1910  the 
census  showed  that  two  million  children  between  the 
ages  of  ten  and  fifteen  were  still  employed  in  gainful 
occupations  in  the  United  States.  The  federal  tax  on 
the  products  which  involve  the  work  of  children  affects 
only  fifteen  per  cent  of  the  full  number  of  juvenile 
workers,  according  to  an  estimate  made  by  the  National 
Child  Labor  Committee.*  The  children  protected  are 
those  who  would  be  employed  in  factories,  mines,  and 
quarries.  Children  employed  in  agriculture,  domestic 
service,  street  trades,  stores,  messenger  and  delivery 
companies,  tenement  homework,  and  in  restaurants  and 
hotels,  are  not  touched  by  the  federal  act,  unless  they 
make  articles  which  are  shipped  in  interstate  commerce. 
State  laws  have  improved  greatly  during  the  last 
decade,  but  even  at  the  present  time  they  permit  the 
continuance  of  much  child  labor.  Most  states  have 
adopted  at  least  a  fourteen  year  age  limit  for  the  in- 

*  Pamphlet  303,  page  4. 


60  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

itiation  of  children  into  industrial  life  and  a  few  have 
higher  limits.  Child  specialists  now  think,  however, 
that  sixteen  should  be  the  minimum  age  limit  and  many 
regard  even  that  too  low.*  The  manufacturing  indus- 
tries are,  it  should  be  said,  now  distinctly  not  the 
chief  offenders  against  children.  Agriculture,  which 
provided  ready-made  the  system  of  child  labor  which 
industry  so  greedly  took  to  its  own  purpose,  still 
retains  its  hold  upon  childhood  in  many  parts  of  the 
country.  The  National  Child  Labor  Committee  in 
recent  surveys  has  found  children,  four,  five  and  six 
years  old  picking  cotton  in  the  Imperial  Valley  of 
California.  In  Oklahoma,  children  as  young  as  five 
were  found  regularly  picking  cotton  while  the  average 
school  attendance  was  only  a  little  more  than  half  of 
the  enrolment.  In  Colorado  five  thousand  children 
between  five  and  fifteen  years  old  were  found  to  be 
regularly  engaged  in  the  beet  industry. 

Industry  did  not  begin  child  labor  but  industry,  in 
a  unique  sense,  did  use  children  for  its  own  profits. 
Manufacturers  entered  the  worker's  home  and  took  his 
young  children  out  and  made  them  labor  for  his  en- 
richment, without  thought  of  their  future  or  of  the 
country.  In  time  the  society  which  created  industry  for 
its  own  ends  saw  that  child  labor  was  a  means  of 
race  deterioration  and  consequently  public  intervention 
— still  far  from  completed — was  inevitable.  For  the 
most  part,  however,  if  the  record  of  a  century  be 
taken,  industry  has  lightened  rather  than  added  to  the 
burdens  carried  by  children.  Childhood  is  more  free 
and  happier  than  it  was  a  century  ago.  The  rise  of 
*  Standards  of  Child  Welfare,  Children's  Bureau,  1919. 


The  Worker's  Family  61 

industry  has  been  coincident  with  this  humanitarian 
development,  and  while  manufacturers  have  in  their 
day  and  generation  on  the  whole  sought  to  retain 
children  in  bondage,  it  is  still  true  that  mechanical 
industry  has  supplied  the  wealth  which  has  really  lib- 
erated childhood.  The  period  during  which  industry 
has  developed  has  taken  work  away  from  children — 
save  in  agriculture  and  in  a  few  other  branches — and  it 
has  established  universal  education.  The  child  of  the 
worker  to-day  has  in  these  respects  a  very  much  better 
chance  than  the  child  born  a  century  ago. 

But  what  about  women?  It  has  already  been 
observed  that  manufacturers  did  not  first  set  women  to 
work.  Family  manufactures,  domestic  industry  which 
preceded  mechanical  production,  were  very  largely  in 
the  hands  of  women,  servants,  and  children.  The  tex- 
tile industry  was  almost  overwhelmingly  a  woman's 
industry.  The  effect  of  the  establishment  of  manu- 
factures was  accordingly  chiefly  to  change  the  nature 
of  woman's  work.  Women  followed  their  familiar 
tasks  out  of  the  home  and  into  the  factory.  Women 
were  employed  in  the  early  factories  because  men  were 
needed  for  heavier  occupations.  The  pioneers  of  in- 
dustry believed  quite  sincerely  that  woman's  place 
was  the  home.  They  were  not  willing  to  let  her  stay 
there  because  they  were  practical  men  who  thought 
more  of  their  profits  than  of  their  prejudices.  Women, 
moreover,  were  cheaper  than  men.  They  still  are. 

There  can,  however,  be  but  little  doubt  that  em- 
ployment in  factories  has  offered  certain  clear  advan- 
tages to  women.  It  has  defined  their  work  more  pre- 
cisely. Instead  of  the  endless  round  of  domestic 


62  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

duties  definite  performance  during  specified  hours  has 
been  demanded.  These  hours  were  at  first  overpower- 
ingly  long.  They  began  at  4:30  in  the  morning  and 
they  ended  at  seven  in  the  evening  or  later.  Fourteen 
and  a  half  hours  was  not  an  unusual  stint.  But  after 
all  those  were  the  hours  which  women — and  men — 
then  worked  on  the  farms  during  the  summer.  When 
hours  became  shorter  the  definiteness  of  industrial  work 
was  undoubtedly  a  factor  which  counted  in  its  favor. 
But  more  than  that,  even  the  low  wages  of  women  have 
meant  a  step  toward  economic  independence.  Before 
manufactures  came  most  women  worked,  but  without 
pay.  After  manufacturing  was  established  women 
continued  to  work,  but  for  pay.  The  first  textile  mills 
in  Rhode  Island  paid  men  for  the  work  they  per- 
formed, and  also  for  the  labors  of  their  women  and 
children.  Dennis  Rier  contracted  on  January  27,  1815, 
to  work  for  the  Poignaud  and  Plant  Mill  at  Lancaster, 
Massachusetts.  His  agreement  provided  that  he  should 
be  paid  for  himself,  his  daughter,  aged  twelve,  his  three 
sons,  his  sister,  and  her  son  and  daughter.  The  fam- 
ily system  was  carried  over  into  the  factory  in  certain 
places  for  a  time,  but  generally  women  were  paid  their 
own  wages.*  Industrial  work  has  accordingly  brought 
to  women  a  measure  of  economic  independence.  That 
is  a  very  great  gain  in  the  development  of  human  lib- 
erty. But  other  effects  of  industry  upon  women  have 
not  been  always  happy.  Women  have  been  underpaid 
and  overworked.  Fatigue  and  strain  have  become  so 
great  a  menace  to  the  health  and  strength  of  women, 
and  through  them,  as  mothers,  of  the  future  genera- 
*  "Women  in  Industry,"  page  268. 


The  Worker's  Family  63 

tions,  that  in  self-defense  the  states  began  to  regulate 
the  conditions  under  which  women  might  be  employed. 
During  the  century  and  more  since  industry  began 
to  take  shape  in  the  United  States  the  government  has 
been  compelled  to  intervene  in  behalf  of  the  women 
who  were  employed  in  industry.  Action  of  this  char- 
acter has  been  taken  grudgingly.  Legislators  who  have 
never  hesitated  to  grant  the  favors  demanded  by  the 
promoters  of  industry,  commerce,  and  transportation 
have  been  more  than  reluctant  to  take  any  public  ac- 
tion in  the  defense  of  the  women  of  the  nation.  Law- 
yers on  the  bench  and  at  the  bar  who  have  built  up 
legal  sanction  for  novel  varieties  of  impalpable  prop- 
erty, by  logic  which  rivals  in  subtlety  the  polemics  of 
medieval  casuists  and  theologians,  have  looked  askance 
at  the  rise  of  new  teachings  concerning  the  duty  of  the 
state  to  protect  the  health  and  vigor  of  women.  Manu- 
facturers and  business  men  who  have  demanded  and 
who  have  received  gifts  of  public  money,  public  credit, 
public  lands,  and  who  have  insisted  that  the  public 
power  of  taxation  be  diverted  to  their  own  enrichment, 
have  presented  an  almost  unbroken  front  against  any 
public  action  in  the  interest  of  women  workers.  This 
has  been  true  largely  because  at  the  time  that  manufac- 
tures were  developing,  political  power  was  in  the 
hands  of  those  who  possessed  property.  As  has  been 
observed,  the  privileges  of  voting  and  of  holding 
office  were  the  exclusive  prerogatives  of  those  who 
owned  property.  As  the  industrial  revolution  came 
on  political  barriers  were  torn  down,  but  before  work- 
ers learned  how  to  use  their  new  ballots  the  theories 
of  laissez-faireism  had  become  a  bulwark  of  property 


64  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

holders  against  the  demands  of  the  workers.  It  is  one 
of  the  paradoxes  of  our  industrial  history  that  the 
same  men  who  insisted  upon  receiving  public  aid  for 
their  own  enterprises  should  have  so  long  been  able 
to  prevent  their  employes  from  obtaining  assistance 
from  the  public  authority.  In  time,  however,  the  states 
began  haltingly  to  take  action  in  the  interest  of  women 
workers.  Along  three  different  lines  this  development 
has  proceeded.  Hours  of  work,  wages,  and  conditions 
affecting  health  and  safety,  have  all  been  the  separate 
occasions  of  what  is  now  a  large,  if  incomplete,  body 
of  legislation.  The  first  enactment  passed  in  the  in- 
terest of  women  was  the  New  Hampshire  ten-hour 
law  of  1847.  This  was  passed  largely  as  a  result  of 
the  campaigning  of  "The  Female  Labor  Reform  Asso- 
ciation of  Manchester"  and  it  actually  preceded  the  first 
British  act  on  the  subject.  The  act  of  Parliament, 
however,  was  enforced,  while  the  pioneer  American 
enactment  was  disregarded.* 

Very  early  in  the  development  of  the  factory  sys- 
tem women  workers  began  to  protest  against  the  long 
hours  exacted  of  them.  The  first  factory  operatives 
were  daughters  of  New  England  farmers,  artizans, 
tradesmen,  and  even  professional  men.  Many  of  them 
worked  in  order  that  brothers  might  be  educated. 
They  were  independent  of  spirit  and  confident  of  the 
respect  of  the  community.  As  early  as  1828  girl  work- 
ers in  cotton  factories  in  Paterson,  New  Jersey,  went 
on  strike  in  order  to  voice  their  protest  against  a 
change  in  the  dinner  hour  and  to  express  their  desire 
for  the  ten-hour  working  day.  Six  years  later  girls 

*  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  10:80. 


The  Worker's  Family  65 

employed  in  the  textile  mills  of  Lowell,  the  model  fac- 
tory city  of  early  New  England,  assembled  to  hear  an 
address  on  the  necessity  of  organization  for  the  purpose 
of  securing  the  eight-hour  day*  From  these  pioneer 
days  of  industry  the  question  of  working  hours  has 
never  become  quiet.  Constant  improvements  in  ma- 
chinery were  made  and  the  production  expected  of  the 
individual  worker  became  accordingly  greater.  In 
March,  1836,  the  girls  of  Amesbury  were  told  that 
they  must  tend  two  looms  in  the  future  without  any 
increase  in  pay.  They  went  on  strike.f  In  spite  of 
the  success  of  a  number  of  their  historic  efforts  at  trade 
organization  it  soon  became  plain  that  alone  and  un- 
aided women  could  not  hope  to  obtain  a  reasonable 
adjustment  of  their  working  hours.  In  consequence, 
relief  was  sought  from  legislative  rather  than  from 
union  activity.  The  first  demands  for  state  action 
came,  however,  almost  exclusively  from  the  organized 
workers  themselves,  who  at  that  time  sought  protective 
laws  for  men  as  well  as  for  women. J  It  has  been  noted 
that  New  Hampshire  passed  the  first  ten-hour  day  for 
women.  The  next  year  Pennsylvania  and  Maine 
passed  similar  laws.  The  Pennsylvania  Act  of  1848 
established  the  ten-hour  day  as  the  legal  working  day 
in  textile  and  paper  factories.  But  special  contracts 
requiring  a  longer  number  of  hours  could  be  made. 
Seven  cotton  factories  in  Allegheny  City  stopped  work 
on  July  4,  on  the  ground  that  they  could  not  continue 
profitably  on  the  ten-hour  basis.  On  August  28  they 

*  Op.  cit.,  page  27. 
t  Idem,  page  35. 
$  Idem,  page  80. 


66  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

resumed  operations,  but  with  wages  reduced  sixteen 
per  cent.*  On  the  whole,  moreover,  it  is  true  that 
these  first  laws  were  not  enforced.  The  states  were 
not  entirely  aware  that  special  machinery  was  essential 
to  the  enforcement  of  industrial  legislation.  They 
imagined  that  local  authorities  could  enforce  factory 
laws.  Furthermore,  the  popular  American  doctrine 
that  laws  might  be  effectually  repealed  by  a  failure  to 
provide  for  their  observance  was  also  at  work.  Then 
as  now  the  interests  which  could  not  prevent  the  pas- 
sage of  a  law  found  the  power  to  prevent  its  enforce- 
ment. Not  until  1879,  when  Massachusetts  showed 
the  way,  had  an  American  state  passed  an  enforceable 
law  for  the  purpose  of  limiting  the  hours  of  labor 
of  women. f  In  1908  the  Oregon  ten-hour  law  for 
women  was  upheld  by  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court.  By  1920  there  were  only  six  states  which  had 
failed  to  place  restrictions  on  the  hours  of  labor  per- 
mitted women  in  industrial  employment.  An  admir- 
able statement  of  the  present  liberal  attitude  toward 
such  legislation  was  formulated  by  the  President's  In- 
dustrial Conference,  which  in  its  final  report  dated 
March,  1920,  said: 

"Women  cannot  enter  industry  without  safeguards 
additional  to  those  provided  for  men,  if  they  are  to  be 
equally  protected.  The  danger  of  exploiting  their  phys- 
ical and  nervous  strength  with  cumulative  ill  effects  upon 
the  next  generation  is  more  serious  and  the  results  are 
more  harmful  to  the  community.  Specia1  provision  is 
needed  to  keep  their  hours  within  reason,  to  prohibit 
night  employment  in  factories  and  workshops,  and  to 
exclude  them  from  those  trades  offering  particular 
dangers  to  women." 

*  "Factory  Legislation  in  Pennsylvania,"  page  20. 
t  "Principles  of  Labor  Legislation,"  page  233. 


The  Workers  Family  67 

The  number  of  employments  included  in  the  prohi- 
bitions of  the  laws  are  those  which  the  legislatures 
regard  as  dangerous  to  health.  Domestic  service  and 
agricultural  labor  are  not  limited  in  the  United  States. 
The  laws  of  Pennsylvania,  for  example,  include  "any 
place  .  .  .  where  work  is  done  for  compensation  of  any 
sort  with  the  exception  of  private  home  and  farm- 
ing."* 

In  one  aspect  of  this  limitation  of  the  working  hours 
of  women  the  United  States  has  been  notably 
backward.  That  is  the  failure  to  prohibit  night  work. 
Night  work,  injurious  to  all,  is  peculiarly  dangerous 
to  women  because,  as  repeated  investigations  have 
shown,  women  in  addition  to  their  factory  labor  carry 
on  the  responsibilities  of  homemaking.  Many  who 
are  employed  during  the  night  by  industry  care  dur- 
ing the  day  for  their  homes  and  their  children.  So 
notorious  is  this  evil  that  as  a  result  of  a  conference 
of  fourteen  leading  European  powers  held  at  Berne 
in  1906,  the  abolition  of  night  work  for  women  was 
recommended.  By  1912  the  principal  European  na- 
tions which  were  party  to  this  conference  had  enacted 
legislation  outlawing  night  work  for  women,  f  Some 
forms  of  night  work  for  women  were  forbidden  by 
the  laws  of  thirteen  American  states  by  1920,  but  gen- 
erally speaking  the  United  States  is  in  this  respect  a 
backward  nation. 

In  addition  to  laws  limiting  the  hours  of  labor  for 
women  and  children  society  has  been  compelled  to  pro- 

*  "Principles  of  Labor  Legislation/'  page  236. 

t  Idem,  page  273 ;  also  "The  Employment  of  Women  and  Chil- 
dren and  the  Berne  Conventions  of  1906,"  Harrison  &  Sons, 
London,  1919. 


68  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

vide  other  means  of  protection.  Some  industrial 
processes  are  so  inherently  dangerous  that  it  has  been 
deemed  advisable  to  exclude  women  and  children  from 
them.  Striking  examples  of  legislation  of  this  kind 
were  the  effectual  prohibition  of  the  use  of  phos- 
phorus in  match  manufacturing  and  the  prohibition 
of  the  employment  of  women  and  children  in  mines. 
Phosphorus  caused  one  of  the  most  terrible  of  occu- 
pational diseases — "phossy  jaw" — a  disease  to  which 
men  also  are  subject,  but  unlike  European  countries 
the  United  States  was  able  to  end  this  evil  only  by  the 
indirect  method  of  imposing  a  prohibitive  tax  on 
matches  containing  white  phosphorus  and  forbidding 
their  import  or  export.*  Some  European  countries 
have  also  prohibited  the  use  of  white  lead  in  industrial 
processes,  but  in  this  matter  the  United  States  has 
failed  to  act.  Regulation  of  dangerous  industrial  proc- 
esses was  built  up  on  laws  designed  to  protect  women 
and  children,  but  at  the  present  time  many  of  these 
hazards  are  recognized  as  equally  dangerous  to  men. 
In  one  way  the  necessity  of  safeguarding  women 
against  destructive  labor  in  factories  has  been  used 
unfairly  against  them.  The  Women's  Bureau  of  the 
United  States  Department  of  Labor  has  pointed  out 
that  women  are  excluded  from  a  number  of  industrial 
processes  which  are  quite  as  dangerous  to  men  as  to 
women. f  Thus,  for  example,  women  are  not  per- 
mitted by  the  laws  of  some  states  to  be  employed  on 
polishing  and  grinding  machines  because  of  the  danger 

*  "Principles  of  Labor  Legislation,"  page  355. 
t  "The  New  Position  of  Women  in  American  Industry,"  page 
32. 


The  Worker's  Family  69 

of  tuberculosis.  The  reasonable  public  policy  in  a 
case  such  as  this  is  to  devise  methods  of  removing 
the  dust  hazard,  which  is  quite  as  much  a  menace  to 
men  as  to  women.  Women  have  been  excluded  from 
trades  on  the  specious  ground  that  their  health  was 
especially  jeopardized  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  men 
desired  merely  to  escape  their  competition.  In  con- 
sequence the  present  tendency  is  toward  reconstruct- 
ing the  industrial  process  so  that  it  may  be  carried  on 
without  danger  to  either  sex  rather  than  excluding 
women  from  it. 

In  another  respect  society  has  intervened  to  protect 
women.  Massachusetts  in  1911  passed  a  law  forbid- 
ding the  employment  of  women  two  weeks  before  and 
four  weeks  after  childbirth  in  industry  or  commerce. 
Four  other  states  have  enacted  similar  laws,  but  the 
United  States  as  a  whole  is  far  behind  European 
countries  in  this  respect.  The  minimum  standards  as 
to  these  matters  formulated  by  the  International  Labor 
Conference  held  at  Washington  in  1919  are  more- 
over in  advance  of  any  legislation  which  has  proved 
acceptable  to  an  American  state.  One  of  the  tests 
both  for  the  number  of  hours  during  which  women 
may  safely  work  and  for  the  industrial  processes  in 
which  they  should  be  permitted  to  participate  is  ob- 
tained as  a  result  of  scientific  inquiry.  It  is  now  to 
a  certain  degree  possible  to  measure  fatigue  and  hazard 
and  to  fix  standards  on  the  basis  of  observation,  al- 
though in  these  affairs  social  philosophy  is  still  a  more 
important  guide  than  physiological  science.  A  num- 
ber of  states,  and  also  the  federal  government  in  so 
far  as  it  participates  in  industry,  have,  however,  begun 


7O  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

to  approach  such  questions  by  the  road  of  scientific  in- 
vestigation. 

Women's  wages  have  been  traditionally  low. 
Women  were  employed  in  industry  because  they  were 
cheaper  than  men.  In  the  home  they  had  worked  with- 
out payment.  In  domestic  service  their  wage  was  ridic- 
ulously small.  In  New  England  during  1808  servants 
were  paid  seventy  cents  a  week  on  the  average  and  fifty 
cents  a  week  in  1815.*  The  competition  of  textile 
factories  raised  the  level  of  wages  so  that  by  1849  the 
wages  of  servants  ranged  from  $1.25  to  $1.50  a  week.f 
The  wages  of  domestic  servants  were  supplemented  by 
board  and  lodging,  however,  and  that  was  of  first  im- 
portance. Manufacturing  industries  did  not  create  a 
low  wage  system :  they  merely  took  advantage  of  the 
system  which  already  existed.  The  clothing  industry, 
which  as  early  as  1828  began  to  establish  "sweat 
shops/'J  was  one  of  the  worst  offenders.  Mathew 
Carey  reckoned  in  that  year  that  of  the  eighteen  to 
twenty  thousand  working  women  in  Baltimore,  Phila- 
delphia, New  York,  and  Boston,  at  least  twelve  thous- 
and could  not  earn  by  constant  employment,  sixteen 
hours  out  of  the  twenty- four,  more  than  $1.25  weekly. 
Carey  estimated  in  1831  the  annual  income  and  ex- 
penses of  the  average  sewing  woman  as  follows : 
Forty-four  weeks'  wages  at  $1.25 $55-00 

Lodgings,  50  cents  per  week $26.00 

Fuel,  25  cents  per  week,  but  say  only  i2l/2 . .     6.50      32.50 

Remains  for  victuals  and  clothes $22.50 

*  Sixteenth  Annual  Report,  Mass.  Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor, 
pages  228,  238. 

•  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,  Vol.  9,  page  179. 
$  Idem,  page  127. 


The  Worker's  Family  71 

The  wages  paid  in  the  textile  mills  were  a  distinct 
advance.  The  average  weekly  wage  in  Massachusetts 
cotton  factories  in  1831  was  said  to  be  $2.25.  At  the 
same  time  the  average  wage  in  New  York  and  New 
Jersey  was  placed  at  $1.90.  At  Lowell,  where  condi- 
tions were  esteemed  especially  good,  women's  wages 
were  said  to  be  from  $i  to  $3  weekly  in  addition  to 
board.  The  wages  paid  in  the  textile  mills,  low  as  they 
were,  were  higher  than  the  customary  rates  in  familiar 
vocations.  They  tended,  moreover,  generally  to  raise 
the  rates  at  which  women  were  compensated.  None 
the  less,  industry,  after  having  drawn  women  out  of  the 
home,  failed  on  the  whole  to  provide  equivalent  sup- 
port for  them.  The  wages  of  women  were  not  in- 
tended generally  to  maintain  them.  They  supplemented 
the  support  provided  in  the  family,  although  often  at 
times,  as  in  Lowell,  the  rate  of  factory  pay  was  actual- 
ly sufficient  for  the  independent  support  of  the  women 
employed.  But,  commonly,  industry  has  paid  women 
less  than  their  maintenance.  It  has  been  parasitic  to 
that  extent.  During  the  winter  of  1908  and  the  spring 
of  1909  the  field  work  for  the  study  of  the  Condition 
of  Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners  in  the  United 
States  was  done.  The  situation  in  twenty-three  indus- 
tries in  seventeen  states  was  investigated.  A  compre- 
hensive picture  of  the  wages  paid  women  was  obtained. 
At  that  time  nearly  seventy-three  per  cent  of  the  women 
employed  in  industry,  eighteen  years  old  and  over,  got 
less  than  $8  a  week,  and  nearly  ninety  per  cent  got  less 
than  $10  a  week.*  At  that  time  $8  a  week  was  the 
least  at  which  an  American  woman  could  support  her- 

*  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  18,  page  23. 


72  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

self  in  health  and  decency.  In  spite  of  this  two-fifths 
of  the  women  investigated  earned  less  than  $6  a  week. 
One-eighth  earned  less  than  $4  a  week.  Industry 
which  employed  women  was  obviously  parasitic. 

Women  employed  in  industry,  taken  in  the  mass, 
have  never  earned  living  wages  in  this  country.  The 
textile  industry  notably  has  paid  family  wages,  that  is, 
each  worker  has  been  paid  so  little  that  only  the  united 
efforts  of  all  available  workers  sufficed  to  support  the 
family.  Women  seemed  unable  successfully  to  chal- 
lenge this  state  of  affairs  and  consequently,  beginning 
in  1910,  a  few  American  states  have  intervened.  Min- 
imum wage  laws  were  passed.  The  minimum  wages 
set  for  different  industries  have  usually  been  higher 
than  what  was  previously  paid  but  low  in  themselves. 
The  year  1919  is  counted  a  period  of  extremely  high 
wages.  During  the  first  four  months  of  that  year 
an  investigation  of  the  wages  paid  in  the  corset  indus- 
try in  Massachusetts  was  made.  "Of  the  adult  work- 
ers, those  eighteen  years  of  age  and  over,  62.1  per  cent 
earn  less  than  $12  a  week."*  In  spite  of  the  fact  that 
the  inquiry  was  made  at  a  time  when  wages  generally 
were  reputed  to  have  attained  unprecedented  levels  in 
this  country,  the  Massachusetts  Minimum  Wage  Com- 
mission was  compelled  to  state  in  its  decree  "that  the 
wages  supplied  a  substantial  number  .  .  .  were  inade- 
quate to  supply  the  necessary  cost  of  living  and  to 
maintain  the  workers  in  health."  The  commission  ac- 
cordingly fixed  a  wage  of  $13  a  week  for  experienced 
employes.  Thrift  is  preached  to  the  poor.  The  figure 
allowed  for  saving  was  37  cents  a  week.  If  the  women 

*  Massachusetts  Minimum  Wage  Commission,  Bulletin  21. 


The  Worker's  Family  73 

were  employed  every  week  in  the  year,  a  condition 
altogether  rare,  they  would  not  at  this  rate  be  able  to 
accumulate  $20  annually.  Minimum  wages,  in  spite 
of  the  greater  liberality  of  some  commissions,  such, 
for  example,  as  the  District  of  Columbia  body,  are  , 
indeed  minima !  They  are  designed  to  maintain  physi- 
cal life  in  more  or  less  discomfort  and  that  is  all. 

But  the  employment  of  married  women  is  far  more 
serious  in  some  of  its  effects.  Industry  transferred 
woman's  work  from  the  home  to  the  factory.  Much 
of  industry  did  pay  men  such  small  wages  that  it  was 
necessary  for  women  to  continue  at  work  in  the  fac- 
tories in  spite  of  the  burden  of  childbearing.  That 
was  a  partial  result  of  the  family  wage  system.  It 
has  had  good  effects  as  well  as  bad  ones.  The  em- 
ployment of  women  after  marriage  has  done  much  to 
dethrone  the  tyrant  husband  and  father  who  was  so 
prominent  a  figure  when  the  first  feminists  were  dream- 
ing of  the  liberation  of  women.  Nothing  has  been  of 
greater  importance  in  the  social  and  economic  enfran- 
chisement of  woman  than  her  capacity  to  earn  wages. 
Industrial  necessity  accomplished  what  could  have 
hardly  been  achieved  in  any  other  manner.  It  brought 
good  in  its  train.  When  factory  owners  began  to 
attract  women  to  their  establishments,  human  freedom 
took  a  step  forward.  Not  that  the  industrial  promoters 
had  any  desire  to  help  the  cause  of  liberty.  So  far 
as  their  writings  show,  they  were  not  even  aware  that 
their  conduct  had  such  an  effect.  But  while  women 
were  more  free  because  of  their  industrial  employment, 
children  suffered  from  the  lack  of  maternal  care.  How 
serious  a  factor  this  has  been  was  first  indicated  with 


74  Industry  and  Human  W 'el fare 

clarity  in  the  studies  made  by  the  federal  Children's 
Bureau. 

Inadequate  wages  paid  men  have  been  shown  by 
the  Children's  Bureau  studies  to  bear  a  very  clear  re- 
lationship to  the  infant  death  rate.  In  Manchester, 
New  Hampshire,  for  example,  a  textile  city,  among 
families  in  which  the  fathers'  earnings  were  less  than 
$494  a  year,  the  infant  death  rate  was  262.4  per 
thousand.  When  the  fathers'  earnings  had  risen  to 
$1,092  or  more  a  year,  the  infant  death  rate  had  fal- 
len to  53.2  per  thousand.  In  other  words,  the  child 
of  a  man  who  earned  at  least  $1,092  a  year  had  five 
times  a  better  chance  at  life  than  the  child  of  the  man 
in  the  lowest  wage  group.*  The  low  wage  groups, 
moreover,  comprise  by  far  the  largest  number  of  fam- 
ilies. It  is  therefore  fair  to  say  that  the  children  of 
the  men  employed  in  industries  die  needlessly  because 
of  the  scanty  incomes  of  their  fathers,  or  because  of 
conditions  generally  accompanying  such  small  earn- 
ings. It  was  found  f  that  "the  babies  of  working 
mothers  in  Manchester  had  a  higher  infant  mortality 
rate  than  the  babies  whose  mothers  were  not  gainfully 
employed."  Furthermore,  it  was  found  that  "insuf- 
ficient or  low  earnings  on  the  part  of  the  father  appear 
to  be  the  most  potent  reason  for  the  mother's  going 
to  work.  Where  the  fathers  earned  less  than  $450  a 
year,  73.3  per  cent  of  the  mothers  were  gainfully  em- 
ployed during  some  part  of  the  year  after  the  baby's 
birth.  With  each  rise  in  economic  status,  the  propor- 

*  U.  S.  Children's  Bureau,  Infant  Mortality  Series  No.  6,  1917, 
page  16. 

t  Op.  cit.,  page  47- 


The  Worker's  Family  75 

tion  of  babies  with  mothers  gainfully  employed  falls 
but  does  not  really  reach  a  small  proportion,  9.6  per 
cent,  until  the  group  with  fathers  earning  $1,050  a 
year  and  over  is  reached."  When  women  were  gain- 
fully employed  during  the  year  before  the  baby's  birth, 
the  death  rate  was  199.2  per  thousand.  One  child  in 
every  five  died.  When  women  were  not  gainfully 
employed,  taking  all  wage  groups,  low  and  high,  the 
mortality  rate  was  133.9  per  thousand.*  When  the 
employment  the  year  after  the  baby's  birth  was  stud- 
ied even  more  striking  results  were  found.  The  death 
rate  for  the  babies  of  those  gainfully  employed  was 
220.9;  °f  those  who  did  not  have  to  work,  only  I22.o.f 
Other  studies  made  by  the  Children's  Bureau  in  this 
country  and  by  the  Local  Government  Board  in  Great 
Britain  give  a  more  general  basis  for  these  conclusions. 
The  forced  employment  of  women  in  industry  has 
taken  an  enormous  toll  of  child  life.  How  great  this 
loss  has  been  is  incalculable,  but  the  rates  learned  by 
the  most  scrupulous  study  show  that  it  must  have  been 
vast  and  appalling.  That  great  source  of  waste  indi- 
cates a  part  of  the  effects  of  the  industrial  system  on 
the  worker's  family. 

This  takes  no  account,  however,  of  underfeeding 
and  the  stunted  development  which  comes  therefrom. 
Studies  made  of  urban  children  have  indicated  that  as 
high  as  fifteen  to  twenty  per  cent  of  the  entire  child 
population  are  underfed  or  are  suffering  from  defects 
attributable  to  imperfect  nutrition.  J  How  many  chil- 

*0p.  cit.,  page  50. 
t  Op.  cit.,  page  52. 

t  Standards  of  Child  Welfare,  U.  S.  Children's  Bureau  Pub- 
lication No.  60,  page  238. 


76  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

dren  were  underfed  during  the  years  before  factories 
congregated  people  in  cities  no  one  knows.  It  is,  how- 
ever, hardly  probable  that  so  many  actually  suffered 
the  pangs  of  hunger.  Studies  of  health  among  rural 
children  of  the  present  time  show  on  the  other  hand 
that  country  children  suffer  from  more  remediable  ills 
than  do  the  city  bred.  It  is  probable,  therefore,  that 
defects  which  arise  from  an  imperfectly  balanced  diet- 
ary were  more  common  prior  to  the  industrial  revo- 
lution. This  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  all 
classes  are  now  able  to  obtain  a  far  more  varied  diet 
than  was  possible  before  the  development  of  cold  stor- 
age and  rapid  transportation. 

Industry  has  thus  had  divers  effects  upon  the  home 
of  the  worker.  It  has  taken  his  wife  and  his  chil- 
dren and  through  their  toil  with  the  aid  of  machines 
created  fabulous  wealth.  It  has  given  the  worker's 
wife  and  daughter  an  income,  but  not  sufficient  to  sup- 
port them.  It  has  been  a  parasite  on  the  labor  of 
women  and  children.  It  has  killed  babies  by  depriv- 
ing them  of  a  mother's  care.  It  has  depressed  child- 
hood by  taking  away  the  opportunity  for  life  out-of- 
doors.  But  the  same  industry  has  contributed  might- 
ily to  the  social  and  economic  enfranchisement  of 
women.  It  has  broadened  woman's  life  and  given  her 
greater  independence  of  man.  It  has  provided  the 
wealth  through  which  later  generations  are  freeing 
childhood  of  the  immemorial  burden  of  production. 
In  its  promise,  at  any  rate,  it  has  been  gain  for  the 
family. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WAGES   IN    INDUSTRY 

INDUSTRY  transferred  the  work  of  women  and  chil- 
dren from  the  home  to  the  factory.  The  workingman's 
wife  and  children  perforce  forsook  their  home  in  order 
to  obtain  employment.  To  the  extent  to  which  women 
and  children  were  drawn  from  domestic  industry  to 
factories  it  is  accordingly  fair  to  say  that  machinery 
entered  and  broke  the  circle  of  the  workingman's  home.) 
Industry  has  also  augmented  vastly  the  sum  of  national 
wealth  and  income.  It  is  important,  therefore,  to  as- 
certain how  these  changes  have  affected  the  standard 
of  living,  the  earnings  and  the  comparative  wealth  of 
the  manual  workers  of  the  nation.  Have  employees 
of  industry  been  paid  a  living  wage?  Have  wage 
earners  had  a  fair  share  of  the  increased  income  made 
possible  by  the  factory  system?  Have  mechanics  and 
laborers  been  able  to  obtain  justly  proportionate  shares 
of  the  wealth  in  whose  creation  they  have  played  so 
essential  a  part? 

In  attempting  to  answer  these  questions  it  gives  per- 
spective to  recall  the  way  of  life  of  mechanics  and 
laborers  during  the  decades  prior  to  the  industrial  revo- 
lution. In  spite  of  the  rising  tide  of  political  democ- 
racy, social  distinctions  were  well  fixed  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century.  As  late  as  1773  students 

77 


78  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

at  Harvard  had  been  rated  according  to  their  social 
status.*  The  differences  between  the  rich  and  the  poor 
were  wide  and  deep.  The  clothing  of  the  workingman 
is  known  from  the  descriptions  given  by  those  who  ad- 
vertised for  the  return  of  their  run-away  servants  and 
redemptioners.  Workingmen  and  boys  generally  wore 
leather  breeches.  These  as  well  as  the  rest  of  his 
apparel  were  made  at  home  or  in  the  neighborhood. 
Professor  Bidwell  quotes  a  manuscript  prepared  by 
Governor  Treadwell  of  Connecticut  in  1802  or  1803, 
which  discussed  clothing  in  detail. f  Men  commonly 
had  two  suits,  one  for  work  and  the  other  for  society. 
For  summer  the  working  costume  consisted  of  a 
"check  homespun  linen  shirt,  a  pair  of  plain  tow  cloth 
trowsers,  and  a  vest  generally  much  worn,  formerly 
with  but  more  modernly  without  sleeves;  or  simply 
a  brown  tow  cloth  frock  and  trowsers,  and  sometimes 
a  pair  of  old  shoes  tied  with  leather  strings  and  a  felt 
hat,  or  an  old  beaver  hat  stiffened  and  worn  white  with 
age.  During  winter  wool  and  buckskin  were  sub- 
stituted for  linen  and  tow  cloth.  Shoes  were  of  the 
roughest  sort,  home-made  from  the  hides."  Clothes 
and  food  were  provided  by  home  manufactures. 
Weeden  relates  the  story  of  Mrs.  Mary  Moody  Emer- 
son, aunt  of  the  great  Emerson  and  herself  a  woman  of 
culture  and  distinction.  She  was  born  about  the  time 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence.  She  had  ten 
dollars  a  year  in  cash.  It  was  used  for  food  and 
charity.  Salt,  molasses,  rum,  tea  and  coffee  were  the 


*  "Economic  and  Social  History  of  New  England,"  by  William 
B.  Weeden,  page  739. 
t  "Rural  Economy  in  New  England,"  by  Percy  Wells  Bidwell. 


Wages  in  Industry  79 

principal  articles  purchased  by  small  farmers  at  the 
beginning  of  the  industrial  revolution.  Life  was  hard. 
The  pioneer  cabins  are  perpetuated  in  the  rude  huts 
now  frequently  seen  in  the  Appalachian  mountain 
ranges.  These  were  built  of  logs  or  of  slabs.  They 
were  cold,  ill-ventilated,  dark  and  wretchedly  crowded. 
Privacy  seems  to  have  been  a  luxury  unknown  among 
the  poor.  It  still  is,  to  a  lesser  extent.  H.  N.  Slater, 
the  son  of  Samuel  Slater,  told  William  B.  Weeden  that 
when  his  father  was  recruiting  labor  for  the  first  cot- 
ton factory  he  had  found  a  man  named  Arnold  with  a 
family  of  ten  or  eleven  living  in  a  rude  cabin  chiefly 
of  slabs,  with  a  chimney  of  stone.  Yet  Mrs.  Arnold 
liked  her  home.  She  stipulated  that  Samuel  Slater 
must  provide  a  house  equally  good  for  her. 

The  chief  articles  in  the  diet  of  one  family  whose 
record  has  been  obtained  were  milk,  corn  bread  and 
bean  porridge.*  That  family  was  far  above  the  aver- 
age in  intelligence.  Two  of  the  sons  became  profes- 
sional men  of  wide  distinction.  Felt,f  who  is  quoted 
by  Bidwell,  said:  "For  more  than  a  century  and  a 
half  (i.  e.,  up  until  almost  1800)  most  of  them  had 
pea  and  bean  porridge,  or  broth  made  of  the  liquor  of 
boiled  salt  meat  and  pork  mixed  with  meal,  and  some- 
times hasty  pudding  and  milk — both  morning  and 
evening."  Beef,  pork,  and  mutton  were  supplied  by 
the  farmer's  own  herds.  Most  of  the  meat  was  dried, 
salted  or  pickled.  The  common  bread  of  the  country 
was  a  mixture  of  rye  and  cornmeal.  Fruits  and  vege- 
tables were  fairly  abundant.  Apples  furnished  cider, 

*  Weeden,  862. 

t  "Rural  Economy  in  New  England,"  page  350 ;  "History  of 
Ipswich,"  page  30. 


8o  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

the  favorite  beverage  of  colonial  New  England.   Maple 
sugar  and  honey  were  obtained  on  the  farm. 

The  wages  paid  those  first  Slater  employees 
varied  from  80  cents  to  $1.40  a  week,  according  to 
H.  N.  Slater's  memory.  In  1801  carpenters  were  paid 
about  a  dollar  a  day  in  Massachusetts.*  Laborers 
were  paid  from  sixty  to  ninety  cents  a  day.  Painters 
seem  to  have  had  about  sixty  cents.  Some  teachers 
were  paid  $30  a  month.  Substantially  the  same  wage 
level  was  maintained  between  1800  and  1815,  accord- 
ing to  the  late  Carroll  D.  Wright's  summary  of  this 
report.  In  the  Memoir  of  Samuel  Slater  an  article  by 
Z.  Allen  intended  to  show  wage  levels  in  1825  is  in- 
cluded. The  wages  quoted  are  designed  to  show  the 
high  rates  paid  in  the  United  States  in  comparison  with 
those  which  then  obtained  in  England  and  France. 
This  was  a  part  of  the  tariff  argument,  and  the  figures 
given  are  accordingly  perhaps  high.  None  the  less, 
the  wage  rates  are  fairly  significant.  The  table  for 
the  United  States,  abbreviated,  is  as  follows :  f 

A  common  laborer  earns  per  day about  $1.00 

A  carpenter 1.45 

A  mason 1.62 

A  farm  laborer  (per  month  and  found) 8.00  to  10.00 

A  servant  maid  (per  week  and  found) i.oo  to     1.50 

Best  machine  makers,  forgers,  etc.,  per  day. .  1.50  to     1.75 
Ordinary  machine  makers,  forgers,  etc.,  per 


day. 


Common  mule  spinners  in  cotton  mills 

Common  mule  spinners  in  woolen  mills 

Weavers  on  hand  looms 

Boys  of  10  or  12  years  of  age,  ditto,  per  week 
Women  in  cotton  mills,  per  week,  average. . 
Women  in  woolen  mills,  per  week,  average. . 


to    1.42 
1.40 


1.25  to 
i. 08  to 
1.08 
.90 
1.50 
2.00  to  3.00 

2.50 


*  Wages   and    Prices:    1752-1860 — i6th   Annual   Report,   Mass. 
Bureau  of  Statistics  of  Labor,  page  219. 
t  "Memoir  of  Samuel  Slater,"  page  340. 


Wages  in  Industry  81 

The  figures  reported  in  McLane's  documents  * 
vary  somewhat  for  different  establishments  and  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  country.  A  Philadelphia  cotton 
mill  reported  for  1832  that  15  men  averaged  $7  a 
week  and  that  65  women  and  46  boys  averaged  $1.50. 

But  before  the  industrial  revolution  the  laborer  and 
artizan  seldom  lived  by  wages  alone.  If  he  was  a  re^J 
demptioner,  his  master  was  responsible  for  his  support. 
If  he  was  a  freeman  he  tilled  the  soil  as  well  as  fol- 
lowed his  trade.  The  villages  of  the  New  England 
towns  were  homes  of  artizans  who  were  also  farmers. 
The  villagers  had  lots  of  from  two  to  ten  acres  and  in 
addition  more  distant  fields.  The  mechanical  trades — 
carpentry,  cobbling,  tanning,  blacksmithing,  and  mill- 
ing— were,  in  the  words  of  Professor  Bidwell,  "usu- 
ally only  auxiliary  occupations,  by-industries  of  agri- 
culture." The  connection  between  agriculture  and  the 
mechanical  trades  was  well  described  from  his  own 
observation  by  Tench  Coxe  f  as  follows : 

"Those  of  the  tradesmen  and  manufacturers  who  live 
in  the  country  generally  reside  on  small  lots  and  farms, 
from  one  acre  to  twenty;  and  not  a  few  upon  farms 
from  twenty  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  acres,  which  they 
cultivate  at  leisure  times,  with  their  own  hands,  their 
wives,  children,  servants  and  apprentices,  and  sometimes 
by  hired  laborers  or  by  letting  out  fields,  for  a  part  of  the 
produce,  to  some  neighbor  who  has  time  or  farm  hands 
not  fully  employed.  This  union  of  manufactures  and 
farming  is  found  to  be  very  convenient  on  the  grain 
farms ;  but  it  is  still  more  convenient  on  the  grazing  and 
grass  farms,  where  part  of  almost  every  day  and  a  great 
part  of  the  year  can  be  spared  from  the  business  of  the 
farm  and  employed  in  some  mechanical  handicraft  or 
manufacturing  business.  Those  persons  often  make 

*  "The  Manufactures  in  the  U.  S.,"  Vol.  2,  1832,  page  220. 
t  "View  of  the  United  States,"  pages  442-443- 


82  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

domestic  and  farming  carriages,  implements  and  utensils, 
build  houses  and  barns,  tan  leather  and  manufacture  hats, 
shoes,  hosiery,  cabinet  work  and  other  articles  of  clothing 
and  furniture,  to  the  great  convenience  of  the  neighbor- 
hood. In  like  manner  some  of  the  farmers,  at  leisure 
times  and  proper  seasons,  manufacture  nails,  potash, 
pearlash,  staves  and  heading,  hoops  and  hand  pikes,  ax- 
handles,  maple  sugar,  etc.  The  most  judicious  planters 
in  the  Southern  States  are  industriously  instructing  their 
negroes,  particularly  the  young,  the  old,  the  infirm  and 
the  females,  in  manufactures:  a  wise  and  humane 


Professor  Bidwell  concluded  from  his  investigations 
that  as  late  as  1810  practically  none  of  the  employees 
of  the  New  England  factories  depended  exclusively 
for  their  living  on  their  income  derived  from  manufac- 
tures. The  industrial  population  was  even  then  only 
beginning  to  be  differentiated  from  the  great  mass  of 
agricultural  workers.  In  the  undifferentiated  industrial 
life  nearly  everybody  had  enough  to  eat.  The  variety 
was  narrowly  restricted  and  many  of  the  things  eaten 
were  doubtless  hard  to  digest.  At  times  pioneers  are 
reported  to  have  been  near  the  starvation  line.  Travel- 
ers who  called  at  such  cabins  in  the  wilderness  brought 
back  word  that  they  had  been  refused  food  because  of 
the  scarcity.  But  on  the  whole  the  testimony  points 
in  the  other  direction.  Of  the  food  they  had,  they  had 
enough.  There  was  probably  little  underfeeding,  al- 
though there  was  undoubtedly — if  modern  surveys  of 
regions  which  reproduce  colonial  conditions  may  be 
taken  as  guides — much  malnutrition.  The  cheap  land, 
however,  gave  men  a  sense  of  freedom  if  it  did  not 
always  raise  their  level  of  living,  and  therefore  it  gave 
them  contentment  with  a  comparatively  low  standard 
of  life.  Measured  by  the  quality  and  variety  of  housing, 


Wages  in  Industry  83 

of  food,  of  clothing,  the  workers  of  days  before  fac- 
tories had  been  developed  in  this  country  were  worse 
off  than  are  their  descendants.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  instead  of  quality  and  variety,  quantity  and  regular- 
ity of  income  are  the  measuring  rods,  the  workers  of 
1800  were  vastly  more  prosperous  than  are  their  suc- 
cessors who  live  during  the  first  decades  of  the 
twentieth  century.  For  as  long  as  men  raised  sheep, 
and  women  spun  and  wove  wool,  clothing  was  attain- 
able. Farmers  do  not  face  the  hazard  of  unemploy- 
ment  in  the  degree  of  industrial  workers.  The  farmer 
may  lack  a  market  for  his  products  but  he  is  never 
without  the  need  to  provide  crops  for  himself,  his 
household,  and  his  livestock.  In  so  far,  therefore,  as 
industrial  workers  were  also  agricultural  workers,  they 
had  a  security  of  life  at  a  low  scale  which  is  quite  be- 
yond the  grasp  of  modern  industrial  workers.  Horace 
Bushnell,  however,  who  remembered  the  earlier  per- 
iod, said  of  it : 

"No  mode  of  life  was  ever  more  expensive :  it  was  life 
at  the  expense  of  labor  too  stringent  to  allow  the  highest 
culture  and  the  most  proper  enjoyment.  Even  the  dress 
of  it  was  more  expensive  than  we  shall  ever  see  again." 

Because  of  this  undifferentiated  industrial  life  wages 
actually  paid  at  the  beginning  of  the  industrial  revo- 
lution are  hard  to  compare  with  the  present  levels.  So 
long  as  artizans  had  even  small  plots  of  land,  so  long 
as  it  was  usual  to  possess  a  cow,  a  pig  and  chickens, 
and  to  tend  a  garden,  the  blacksmith  or  the  tailor  or 
the  shoemaker  was  not  solely  dependent  on  his  wages. 
He  had  supplementary  sources  of  income.  Modern 
industry  with  its  congestion  in  cities  has  taken  away 


84  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

these  perquisites.  The  nominal  wages  now  paid  must 
purchase  many  things  which  the  predecessors  of  the 
present  wage  earners  "found"  for  themselves.  Nom- 
inal wages  in  1830  must  accordingly  have  been  far 
lower  than  the  apparent  rates  in  1921  before  they  could 
be  equal.  Nominal  wages  have  clearly  increased.  The 
rates  from  1840  to  1891  were  calculated  for  the  Aldrich 
Committee.*  Relative  wages  were  calculated  in  gold 
for  all  occupations  of  which  the  investigators  had 
records.  Taking  five-year  intervals  the  table  is  as  fol- 
lows, using  the  wage  rates  paid  in  January,  1860,  as 

the  base : 

Average  According 

Year  Simple  Average  to  Importance 

1840  87.7  82.5 

1845  86.8  85.7 

1850  92.7  90.9 

1855  98.0  97.5 

1860  100.0  loo.o 

1865  66.2  68.7 

1870  133.7  136.9 

1875  140.8  140.4 

1880  141.5  143.0 

1885  150.7  155.9 

1800  158.9  168.2 

1891  160.7  1 68.6 

The  changes  from  1890  to  1903  were  reported  in 
the  Nineteenth  Annual  Report  of  the  United  States 
Commissioner  of  Labor,  published  in  1904.  This  re- 
port computed  the  average  for  1890-1899.  Reckoning 
from  that  as  a  basis  the  changes  in  weekly  earnings 
per  employee  are  as  follows: 

1890  101.0 

1895  98.4 

1900  104.1 

1903  112.3 

*U.   S.   Senate  Doc.   52,   Congress  2d   Session   Report   1394, 
Part  i,  page  14. 


Wages  in  Industry  85 

An  index  number  of  wages  was  also  published  in 
the  Monthly  Labor  Review  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of 
Labor  Statistics  for  February,  1921.  This  table  was 
figured  on  a  currency  basis  during  the  Civil  War.  Farm 
wages  are  excluded.  The  rates  quoted  for  1920  were 
taken  during  the  summer  months  and  ' 'probably  repre- 
sent the  wage  peak  of  the  year."  It  is  as  follows, 
using  five-year  intervals: 

Year  Index  Number 

1840  33 

1845  33 

1850  35 

1860  39 

1865  58 

1870  67 

1875  67 

1880  60 

1885  60 

1890  69 

1895  68 

1900  73 

1905  82 

1910  93 

1915  103 

1920  234 

t 

It  is  obvious  from  these  calculations,  based  as  they 

are  on  wage  rates  without  any  reference  to  annual 
earnings,  that  the  nominal  wages  paid  have  increased 
greatly  during  the  industrial  revolution.  It  is  fairly 
safe  to  assert  that  real  wages  have  also  been  aug- 
mented. The  change  from  hand  production  to  the 
factory  system,  however,  it  must  be  remembered,  has 
been  contemporaneous  with  a  social  revolution.  In 
1800  the  employment  of  children  was  counted  a  disci- 
pline leading  to  virtue  as  well  as  a  source  of  proper 
profit  for  their  parents  and  guardians.  At  present  the 


86  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

employment  of  children  in  industry  or  agriculture  is 
known  to  be  a  serious  handicap  to  their  normal  de- 
velopment as  workers  and  as  citizens.  Similarly,  in 
1800  the  wife  and  mother  was  supposed  to  perform 
certain  duties.  A  part,  a  very  heavy  part,  of  the  bur- 
den of  family  support  rested  upon  her.  At  the  pres- 
ent time  the  employment  of  the  mothers  of  young 
children  outside  the  home  is  known  to  be  evil.  Because 
of  the  changes  which  the  factory  system  has  entailed, 
mothers  and  children  can  no  longer  safely  share  to  the 
same  extent  in  the  maintenance  of  the  family.  Con- 
sequently society  has  been  impelled  to  formulate  a  new 
standard  in  measuring  wages.  The  wage  earner  to- 
day is  supposed  to  earn  enough  to  support  in  health, 
if  not  in  comfort,  himself,  a  wife,  and  three  children 
under  fourteen  years  of  age.  That  standard  of  aspir- 
ation has  seldom  been  realized  in  the  United  States 
so  far  as  the  great  majority  of  workers  in  industry 
are  concerned.  Nominal  wages  have  increased  enor- 
mously, and  real  wages  have  advanced  considerably, 
but  at  no  time  in  the  history  of  the  United  States  have 
a  majority  of  the  male  workers  been  able  to  support 
themselves  and  their  families.  It  has  never  been  pos- 
sible for  working-class  mothers  to  remain  in  their 
homes  since  the  factory  system  was  entrenched.  Not 
only  is  that  true,  but  also,  as  was  previously  noted, 
numerous  inquiries  show  that  women  employed  in  in- 
dustry have  been  paid  less  than  the  minimum  sum 
required  to  support  the  worker  alone  in  health.  Real- 
ization of  this  fact  has  resulted  in  the  striking  devel- 
opment of  minimum  wage  laws  for  women  during  the 
last  few  years. 


Wages  in  Industry  87 

The  Senate  Immigration  report  printed  in  1911  * 
offered  illuminating  evidence  concerning  the  insuf- 
ficiency of  the  earnings  of  male  heads  of  households. 
Studies  were  made  of  different  industries.  The  aver- 
age annual  earnings  of  the  husbands  at  work  in  silk 
goods  manufacturing  and  dyeing  were  reported  to  be 
$668  for  native  white  Americans  and  $426  for  the 
foreign-born.  At  that  time  the  cost  of  supporting  a 
family  in  New  York  City  was  between  $800  and  $900. 
It  is  manifest  that  on  the  average  neither  American 
men  nor  foreigners  employed  in  the  silk  industry  were 
able  unaided  to  maintain  their  families.  More  than 
three-quarters  of  the  male  heads  of  families  employed 
in  this  industry  got  less  than  $600  a  year,  and  more 
than  ninety-five  per  cent  got  less  than  $800,  the  mini- 
mum sum  reckoned  at  that  time  to  be  needful  for  the 
support  of  a  family  of  five  in  health.  The  manufac- 
ture of  cotton  goods  affords  interesting  data  for  the 
reason  that  textile  factories  were  the  pioneers  of  the 
industrial  revolution  in  the  United  States.  The  aver- 
age annual  earnings  of  the  white  American  husbands 
in  this  industry  were  found  by  the  Immigration  Com- 
mission to  be  $585,  while  the  annual  earnings  of  the 
foreign-born  husbands  amounted  to  $461.  The  find- 
ings of  various  governmental  reports  has  been  sum- 
marized by  W.  Jett  Lauck  and  Edgar  Sydenstricker 
who  undertook  the  study  for  the  United  States  Com- 
mission on  Industrial  Relations.  In  "Conditions  of 
Labor  in  American  Industries,"  f  a  study  recapitulating 

*6ist  Congress,  2d  Session,  Senate  Document  633,  Vol.  73, 
page  43. 

t  Page  61.  See  also  U.  S.  Bureau  Labor  Statistics,  Bulletin  75, 
pages  23  and  24,  and  Immigration  Commission  Reports,  Vol.  19, 
page  226. 


88  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

the   important   federal   and  state   investigations   into 
wages,  the  authors  said : 

"An  examination  of  all  authoritative  data  on  annual 
earnings  of  workers  during  recent  years  appears  to 
indicate  that  the  following  are  warrantable  conclusions: 

"i.  That  fully  one-fourth  of  the  adult  male  workers 
in  the  principal  industries  and  trades  who  are  heads  of 
families  earned  less  than  $400,  one-half  less  than  $600, 
four-fifths  less  than  $800,  and  less  than  one-tenth  earned 
as  much  as  $1,000  a  year. 

"2.  That  fully  a  third  of  all  male  workers  18  years  of 
age  and  over  in  the  principal  industries  and  trades, 
whether  heads  of  families  or  not,  earned  less  than  $400, 
two-thirds  earned  less  than  $600  and  about  one-twentieth 
earned  over  $1,000. 

"3.  That  approximately  a  fourth  of  women  workers 
18  years  of  age  and  over  who  are  regularly  employed  in 
the  principal  manufacturing  industries  earned  less  than 
$200,  and  two-thirds  earned  less  than  $400  a  year." 

This  summary  was  made  during  1914  and  1915  and 
it  was  designed  to  portray  conditions  which  obtained 
at  that  time.  The  actual  inquiries  were  made  prev- 
iously. The  field  work  of  the  Immigration  Commis- 
sion, for  example,  was  carried  on  during  1908  and 
1909.  None  the  less,  wage  rates  collected  by  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  and  by  some 
of  the  state  labor  boards  indicate  that  the  picture  is 
fairly  indicative  of  the  facts  in  1914.  The  war  time 
changes  in  wages  were  so  great,  however,  both  in  the 
United  States  and  abroad,  that  it  is  essential  to  take 
into  consideration  the  gains  made  since  July,  1914.  In 
some  industries  these  have  been  notable.  The  aver- 
age weekly  wage  for  male  wool  sorters  was  $14.97, 
according  to  the  accounting  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of 
Labor  Statistics  in  1914.  In  1920  the  average  wage 
became  $41.90.* 
*  Monthly  Labor  Review,  March,  1921. 


Wages  in  Industry  89 

Since  1920,  however,  wages  have  been  sharply  re- 
duced in  the  wool  industry  and  elsewhere.  Card  tenders 
were  paid  on  the  average  $8.26  weekly  during  1914.  By 
1920  their  average  had  risen  to  $24.88,  but  this  too 
has  been  subject  to  the  same  general  reduction.  Dur- 
ing 1919  a  wage  of  slightly  more  than  $40  weekly  was 
the  least  sum  at  which  a  family  could  be  supported 
in  health  under  urban  conditions.  A  report  of  the 
Industrial  Commission  of  Ohio  shows  the  wages  of 
employees  of  all  the  manufacturing  industries  of  that 
state  for  1919.  Out  of  932,808  male  wage  earners 
over  1 8  years  of  age,  only  153,040  were  above  the  $40 
mark.  The  vast  majority  got  less  than  enough  to  sup- 
port a  family  in  1919  at  high  price  and  wage  levels, 
just  as  they  had  gotten  too  little  for  family  support  in 
1914  on  a  lower  price  scale.*  A  rapid  survey  f  of  the 
wages  and  hours  of  labor  during  the  year  1919  was 
made  by  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  at  the  instance 
of  the  War  Industries  Board.  This  study  summarized 
facts  concerning  more  than  400,000  wage  earners.  It 
is  accordingly  one  of  the  most  extensive,  if  not  one  of 
the  most  detailed,  researches  ever  made  in  this  field. 
The  average  weekly  earnings  of  men  employed  in 
industry  amounted  to  $25.56  during  the  two  weeks 
studied.  The  average  wage  of  women  in  industry  was 
$13.56.$  The  inquiry,  however,  was  limited  to  a  single 
payroll  period  and  it  was  made  at  a  time  when  some 
of  the  industries  reported  were  maintaining  high  pro- 
duction while  others  were  reducing  their  output.  The 

*  Monthly  Labor  Review,  February,  1921. 

t  Industrial  Survey  in  Selected  Industries  in  the  U.  S.,  1919, 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  No.  265. 
$Idem,  computed  from  Table  5,  pages  37-38. 


9O  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

figures  collected  by  the  National  Industrial  Con- 
ference Board,  an  organization  of  industrial  associa- 
tions, designed  to  present  the  point  of  view  of  em- 
ployers, depict  a  similar  situation.* 

The  National  Industrial  Conference  Board  reported 
that  its  inquiries  showed  that  the  wage  level  of  March, 
1920 — which  has  been  considerably  lowered — was 
"from  82  per  cent  to  163  per  cent  higher  than  that  of 
September,  1914,  as  measured  by  the  full  time  weekly 
earnings."  But  percentage  increases  reveal  less  than 
actual  figures.  The  following  table,  based  on  the  tables 
of  the  Conference  Board's  report,  shows  the  average 
full-time  weekly  earnings  of  the  male  employees  of 
the  industries  cited : 

September,  ip id,    March,  1920 

Boot  and  shoe $14.51  $28.70 

Chemical 13.07  35-72 

Cotton 9.91  24-87 

Furniture 10.78  22.87 

Hosiery  and  knit  goods...  11.25  27.65 
Leather  tanning  and  finish- 
ing   n.oi  30.18 

Metal 13.99  29.79 

Paper 13.10  28.82 

Printing  and  publishing.. .  18.33  31.67 

Rubber 14.99  36.32 

Silk ...  11.10  28.98 

Wool ii. ii  28.70 

The  Conference  Board,  an  agency  of  the  manufac- 
turers who  gave  these  figures,  noted  in  summary  that 
the  "average  actual  weekly  earnings  of  male  workers 
increased  from  $11.11  in  September,  1914,  to  $28.70 


*  Changes  in  Wages  During  and  Since  the  War,  Research 
Report  31,  September,  1920,  National  Industrial  Conference 
Board. 


Wages  in  Industry  91 

in  March,  1920."  This  was  indeed  a  rise  to  the  extent 
of  176  per  cent,  but  it  was  almost  as  difficult  for  a 
husband  and  father  unaided  to  support  his  wife  and 
children  on  his  own  earnings  in  1920  as  it  had  been 
in  1914.  Never,  in  fact,  so  far  as  is  shown  by  the 
records  which  have  been  obtained,  has  the  factory 
system  in  this  country  paid  the  average  male  worker 
a  sum  sufficient  to  support  a  family  in  health  and  com- 
fort. Yet  with  the  rise  of  industry  the  wealth  of  the 
country  has  increased  beyond  imagining.  This  is 
shown  vividly  by  the  following  table :  * 

Year          Population  Total  Wealth          Per  Capita 

1800 

1830 

1850 

1860 

1870 

1880 

1890 

1900 

1904 

1912 

Per  capita  wealth  has  been  increased  manifold  but 
it  has  not  brought  ease  to  the  workers  in  factories.  It 
has  been  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  a  relatively  small  \ 
proportion  of  the  population.  The  income  of  the  nation 
has,  in  fact,  come  into  the  possession  very  largely  of  a 
numerically  insignificant  minority  of  people  in  eight 
industrial  states.  Together,  New  York,  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Mich- 
igan, and  Illinois  reported  for  1918  more  than 
half  of  the  income  of  the  United  States. f  About 

*  Statistical  Abstract  of  the  United  States,  1919,  page  750. 

t  Statistics  of  Income,  Compiled  from  the  Returns  of  1918, 
under  the  Direction  of  the  Commissioner  of  Internal  Revenue, 
Washington,  1921;  page  7. 


5,308,483 

12,866,020 

23,191,876 
31,443,321 
38,558,371 
50,155,783 
62,947,714 

75,994,775 
82,466,551 

95,410,503 

$    7,i35,78o,ooo 
16,159,616,000 
30,068,518,000 
43,642,000,000 
65,037,091,000 
88,517,307,000 
107,104,212,000 
187,739,071,090 

$   307-69 
513.93 
779.83 
870.20 

l,l&i.79 

1,318.11 
1,965.00 

92  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

160,000  people  admitted  incomes  of  $10,000  or  more. 
They  constituted  3.61  per  cent  of  those  who  had  in- 
comes large  enough  to  make  returns  to  the  govern- 
ment, but  they  secured  more  than  a  quarter  of  all  the 
income  taxable.  Under  the  old  agricultural  system  in 
the  South  the  economic  distinctions  between  the  classes 
were  as  great  as  those  which  have  been  achieved  by  the 
factory  system,  but  they  were  no  wider.  So,  while  in 
this  country  that  mechanical  revolution  which  Alex- 
ander Hamilton  and  others  sought  with  such  enthu- 
siasm has  undoubtedly  increased  the  sum  of  national 
wealth  beyond  all  dreams,  it  has  not  hitherto  provided 
the  means  for  a  comfortable  or  good  life  to  those  who 
bear  its  heavy  burdens. 

rf*  Furthermore,  not  until  recent  years  has  there  been 
^any  considerable  demand  in  this  country  that  industry 
jpay  living  wages  to  its  workers.  The  cost  of  living 
^doctrine  began  to  emerge  first  as  a  preachment  of  social 
workers  who  needed  an  economic  standard  to  apply  to 
their  "cases."  Later  it  got  the  attention  of  legislatures 
when  minimum  wage  laws  for  women  were  under  con- 
sideration. Finally  it  received  an  ambiguous  sanction 
from  the  government  after  President  Wilson  formally 
proclaimed  the  principles  of  the  National  War  Labor 
Board  as  the  basis  for  industrial  adjustments.  Dur- 
ing the  war  the  War  Labor  Board,  the  Shipping  Board 
and  other  public  agencies  utilized  the  principle  of  the 
cost  of  living  in  fixing  wages.  In  writing  the  rules 
for  the  Railroad  Labor  Board,  Congress  also  enjoined 
the  federal  adjusters  to  take  the  cost  of  living  into 
consideration,  although  at  the  same  time  Congress  said 
that  the  market  rate  must  also  be  a  factor.  The  market 


Wages  in  Industry  93 

rate,  the  price  paid  in  similar  industries,  is  often  below 
the  cost  of  living  level,  as  the  Railroad  Labor  Board  dis- 
covered when  during  the  summer  of  1921  the  wages  of 
unskilled  laborers  were  readjusted  downward.  Even 
then  in  the  case  of  the  railroad  workers,  which  so 
far  as  the  federal  law  is  concerned  is  unique,  the  rule 
of  the  living  wage  has  been  mitigated  by  the  pitiless 
principle  of  supply  and  demand. 

In  a  condition  as  changing  as  that  of  the  late  au- 
tumn of  1921  it  is  impossible  to  reckon  with  any  pre- 
cision the  general  level  of  wages.  Reductions  have 
been  so  numerous  and  unemployment  is  so  widespread 
that  earlier  estimates  are  rendered  obsolete.  The  ex- 
ecutive of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  has 
guessed  that  the  total  wage  reduction  during  the  season 
of  depression  which  began  in  the  autumn  of  1920 
reached  by  August,  1921,  a  total  of  a  billion  dollars. 
The  calculation  may  be  well  made.  No  one  is  in  a 
position  to  deny  it.  Certain  is  it  that  the  unorganized 
workers  have  been  unable  to  resist  wholesale  wage 
revisions  and  that  in  those  trades  where  unions  were 
not  powerful,  readjustments  were  made  without  any 
clear  reference  to  the  sum  required  for  the  support  of 
a  family  under  American  conditions.  Trade  unions 
furthermore  have  not  generally  been  strongly  en- 
trenched in  the  trades  affected  by  the  mechanical  revo- 
lution. Factory  workers  have  accordingly  especially 
suffered  from  the  consequences  of  the  depression  of 
1920  and  1921. 

Those  trades  which  were  well  unionized  were  on 
the  other  hand  able  to  insist  that  the  cost  of  living 
be  used  as  one  criterion  of  wage  adjustments.  The 


94  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

clothing  makers,  who  were  powerfully  organized, 
secured  an  investigation  of  wages  and  prices  and  ob- 
tained a  settlement  which  took  full  account  of  the  neces- 
sary expenses  of  living.  But  they  were  exceptional 
among  factory  workers.  During  prosperous  times  the 
clothing  workers  and  other  vigorous  unions  have  gone 
a  step  further  in  demanding  not  only  living  wages  but 
a  share  in  the  profits  of  their  industry.  The  locomotive 
engineers  in  their  contention  with  the  Western  rail- 
roads were  notable  exponents  of  this  point  of  view. 
But  in  recent  times,  except  for  a  period  during  the 
World  War  and  immediately  thereafter,  workers  have 
been  more  numerous  than  jobs  in  most  industries.  The 
market  rate  and  not  the  cost  of  living  has  been  the 
chief  influence  determining  the  level  of  wages.  Abund- 
ant immigration  from  Europe,  however  valuable  its 
social  and  political  consequences  may  have  been,  has 
tended  to  keep  full  the  reservoir  of  "surplus"  workers 
and  has  made  possible  the  continuance  of  a  low  wage 
system.  Even  with  the  losses  of  the  period  of  hard 
times,  there  seems,  however,  not  to  have  been  a  com- 
plete return  to  the  conditions  of  1914.  Some  of  the 
advances  were  retained  as  increments  to  the  slow  pro- 
gress of  earlier  years  toward  the  economic  enfranchise- 
ment of  the  working  population  of  America. 


! 


CHAPTER  V 

HOURS 

MEN,  women,  and  children  worked  at  least  twelve 
hours  a  day  in  the  early  factories.  The  routine  of 
agriculture  was  followed  by  industry.*  M.  Plimpton 
of  Southbridge,  Massachusetts,  reported  to  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury  that  the  regular  shift  of  work 
was  on  the  "average  12  hours  a  day,  11^2  months  in 
the  year."  This  was  widely  the  custom.  Stephen 
Randal,  Jr.,  of  Randal's  Mills,  North  Providence,  re- 
ported "12  hours  each  day  the  year  through."  W.  A. 
Andross  for  the  Eagle  Manufacturing  Company,  Hart- 
ford county,  Connecticut,  replied,  "Twelve  hours  a 
day,  all  the  year."  Reed  &  Watson,  of  Livingston, 
New  York,  said,  "Twelve  hours  per  day  the  whole 
year."  In  Pennsylvania,  even  in  early  days,  the  work- 
ing hours  were  especially  long.  Roland  Curtin,  who 
owned  the  Eagle  Iron  Works  of  Centre  county,  West 
Pennsylvania,  reported  that  the  "monthly  hands  work 
during  the  whole  year  except  at  meal  hours." 

These  bits  of  testimony  are  thoroughly  typical.  The 
working  day  everywhere  was  at  least  twelve  hours,  ex- 
clusive of  meal  times,  although  this  was  sometimes 
shortened  to  ioj4  hours  during  the  winter.  Whatever 


*  Documents  Relative  to  the  Manufactures  in  the  United  States. 
Executive  Documents,  ist  Session,  22d  Congress,  1831-1832. 

95 


g6  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

its  other  sins  may  be  the  factory  system  did  not  inau- 
gurate the  long  working  day,  which  is  an  inheritance 
from  other  times.  But  without  mitigation  the  new 
order  of  "labor  saving"  industry  continued  the  work- 
ing hours  of  the  farms.  James  Montgomery,* 
superintendent  of  the  York  factories  at  Saco,  Maine, 
estimated  in  1839,  almost  a  decade  after  the  reports 
previously  quoted,  that  at  Lowell  the  factory  hours 
averaged  73  J4  a  week  during  the  year  and  that  in  the 
Middle  and  Southern  states  the  shift  was  longer. 

The  rebellion  against  long  hours  of  toil  began,  in 
fact,  before  the  industrial  revolution.  In  1791  the 
Journeymen  Carpenters  of  Philadelphia  struck  against 
the  master  carpenters.  By  agreement  they  decided : 
"That  in  the  future,  a  Day's  Work  amongst  us,  shall 
be  deemed  to  commence  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning 
and  terminate  at  six  in  the  evening  of  each  day."  f 
This  demand  for  a  twelve-hour  day  in  place  of  the 
shift  from  sun  to  sun  seems,  albeit,  to  have  been  re- 
ceived with  no  more  favor  in  1791  than  the  eight-hour 
day  is  accorded  by  many  employers  at  present.  The 
movement  for  the  shorter  work  day  was  historically 
an  attempt  of  a  politically  and  socially  disfranchised 
class  to  obtain  leisure  and  comfort.  During  the  early 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  political  fran- 
chise was  extended  to  men  who  had  previously  been 
without  vote.  They  found,  however,  that  without 
education  they  were  hardly  able  to  utilize  the  political 
power  which  seemed  to  have  been  bestowed  upon  them. 
Consequently  they  passionately  sought  education  and 

•  *  "History  of  Labor  in  the  United  States,"  i :  172. 
t  Op.  cit.,  i :  69. 


Howrs  97 

the  leisure  which  is  prerequisite  to  learning.  "Must 
a  man,  because  he  is  poor  and  a  mechanic,  go  through 
the  drudgery  of  day  labor  in  the  hot  and  weary  days 
of  midsummer  without  respite?"  asked  the  Boston 
Transcript  in  1832.*  Answering  its  own  question, 
the  paper  continued :  "But  let  the  mechanic's  labor  be 
over  when  he  has  wrought  ten  or  twelve  hours  in  the 
long  days  of  summer  and  he  will  be  able  to  return  to 
his  family  in  season  and  with  sufficient  vigor,  to  pass 
some  hours  in  the  instruction  of  his  children  or  in  the 
improvement  of  his  own  mind." 

The  character  of  the  opposition  to  the  ten-hour 
day  at  that  time  was  set  forth  by  the  merchants  and 
shipowners  of  Boston  during  the  ship  carpenters' 
strike  of  1832,  when  they  said  in  an  address  to  the 
public  that  "the  time  thus  proposed  to  be  thrown  away 
would  be  a  serious  loss  to  this  active  community"  and 
"the  habits  likely  to  be  generated  by  this  indulgence 
in  idleness  in  our  summer  mornings  and  afternoons 
will  be  very  detrimental  to  the  journeyman  individu- 
ally and  very  costly  to  us  as  a  community."  They 
feared  also  that  if  the  carpenters  obtained  the  ten-hour 
day  the  example  "will  probably  be  followed  by  thou- 
sands who  are  now  contentedly  and  industriously 
pursuing  their  avocations,  and  thus  produce  incal- 
culable injury  to  the  whole  people."  The  essence  of 
their  reasoning  was  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the 
merchants  and  shipowners,  who,  as  representatives  of 
the  property  holders,  had  always  governed  Massachu- 
setts, could  not  understand  that  common  working  men 

*  February  20,  1832 ;  quoted  in  "History  of  Labor  in  the  United 
States,"  1:324- 


98  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

were  rising  to  a  new  status.  They  feared  also  that  if 
the  carpenters  secured  their  demand  the  factory 
workers  would  be  disquieted  and  the  long  day  there  too 
would  be  jeopardized. 

It  is  significant  of  the  industrial  development  of  this 
country  that  the  first  protests  against  the  long  working 
day  came  not  from  the  employees  of  factories  but  from 
the  members  of  old  crafts,  who  developed  trade  union 
organization.  The  New  York  City  bakers  *  thus  in 
1821  led  a  movement  for  the  abolition  of  Sunday  work 
in  their  trade.  Members  of  the  building  trades  were 
prominent  in  the  earlier  campaigns  for  the  shortening 
of  the  work  day,  as  in  recent  years  they  have  been 
conspicuous  among  the  beneficiaries  of  the  movement. 
Occasionally  there  were  stirrings  among  the  factory 
girls  of  New  England  or  Pennsylvania,  but  the  agita- 
tion for  shorter  hours  was  chiefly  in  the  hands  of 
social  reformers  and  of  trade  unionists  who  did  not 
represent  workers  in  factories.  Steadily  throughout 
the  nineteenth  century  the  demand  for  a  shortening 
of  hours  of  labor,  however,  grew  in  strength.  The 
progress  of  legislation  regulating  the  hours  of  labor 
of  women  and  children  employed  in  industry  has  been 
touched  in  a  previous  chapter,  f  As  early  as  1832  the 
New  England  Association  of  Farmers,  Mechanics  and 
Other  Workmen  pointed  out  that  since  "a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  operatives  in  our  factories  are  and  must 
continue  to  be  a  helpless  population,  it  is  indispensable 
that  they  be  put  under  the  unremitted  supervision  and 

*  "History  of   Labor  in  the  United   States,"   1:162;   quoting 
American  Federationist,  XX:  518. 
t  Chapter  III. 


Hottirs  99 

protection  of  the  law  of  the  land."  The  factory  owners 
who  through  tariffs  and  by  other  devices  had  so  consis- 
tently sought  and  obtained  the  protection  of  the  law  for 
themselves  were  able  to  thwart  this  and  similar  efforts 
to  extend  the  protection  of  the  state  to  factory  workers. 
In  time,  however,  the  organized  trade  unionists,  hav- 
ing created  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  and 
having  adopted  a  new  philosophy,  decided  against  the 
policy  of  seeking  a  shortening  of  their  own  working 
day  by  legal  enactment.  The  unionists  preferred  to 
obtain  their  demands  by  direct  negotiations  with  their 
employers,  on  the  theory  that  progress  in  that  manner 
would  strengthen  their  organization  while  legislative 
aid  might  weaken  unionism.  Since  May  i,  1886,  the 
eight-hour  day  has  been  one  of  the  primary  objectives 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor.* 

The  argument  for  the  shorter  working  day  has 
changed  in  form  through  succeeding  generations,  but 
essentially  it  has  been  the  same.  The  negative  argu- 
ment has  been  the  need  to  protect  workers  against  the 
physically  devastating  effects  of  too  long  hours  of 
work.  On  the  positive  side  the  goal  has  been  to  pro- 
vide enough  free  time  to  enable  workers  to  develop  as 
normal  human  beings.  As  long  as  the  great  majority 
of  workers  were  disfranchised  it  mattered  little  to  the 
state  whether  they  possessed  the  unoccupied  time  in 
which  to  become  intelligent  citizens.  Disfranchised 
folk  need  not  think  about  public  affairs.  But  that  posi- 
tion no  longer  applied  when  universal  manhood  and 
womanhood  suffrage  obtained.  More  persuasive  with 
the  courts,  when  the  short  working  day  was  under  con- 
*  "History  of  Labor  in  the  United  States,"  2:376. 


ioo  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

sideration,  has  been  the  health  argument.  This  has 
been  enormously  developed  by  recent  scientific  re- 
searches.* In  his  introduction  to  Miss  Goldmark's 
classic  study  Dr.  Frederic  S.  Lee  summed  up  the  scien- 
tific attitude  when  he  said : 

"Industrialism  has  been  quick  to  accept  the  achieve- 
ments of  science  in  inanimate  things,  but  slow  to  recog- 
nize the  teachings  of  physiology  with  regard  to  man 
himself.  Methods  and  machines  have  been  revolutionized 
but  the  human  element  has  not  been  eliminated.  The  man 
or  the  woman  or  the  child  is  still  essential  to  the  method 
and  the  machine,  and  while  the  inanimate  agent  demands 
more  and  more  of  him,  his  fundamental  physiological 
powers  are  probably  not  so  very  different  from  what  they 
were  when  he  built  the  pyramids  and  made  papyrus.  He 
may  sharpen  his  attention,  shorten  his  reaction  time,  and 
develop  manual  skill ;  scientific  management  may  step  in 
and  direct  his  powers  more  intelligently,  but  sooner  or 
later  his  physiological  limit  is  again  reached  on  a  new 
plane.  Try  as  we  will,  we  cannot  get  away  from  the 
fact  that  so  long  as  machines  need  men,  physiological 
laws  must  be  reckoned  with  as  a  factor  in  industrialism." 

Fatigue  is  the  new  element  which  has  entered  the 
discussion  of  the  short  working  day.  The  cause  of 
fatigue  is  a  toxin,f — the  subject  is  still  largely  a  terra 
incognita  of  science — which,  unless  eliminated  by  nor- 
mal rest,  eventuates  a  number  of  evils,  including  dis- 
eases, accidents,  economic  waste,  probably  industrial 
unrest — if  that  be  counted  an  evil — and  possibly  racial 
degeneration.  The  factory  system  was  sought  by  the 
pioneers  because  it  was  "labor  saving,"  and  yet  it  has 
entailed  new  and  more  harassing  strains  than  those 
ordinarily  experienced  under  the  old  manual  scheme 
of  production.  Among  these  Miss  Goldmark  pointed 

*  See  "Fatigue  and  Efficiency,"  by  Josephine  Goldmark ;  "The 
Human  Machine  and  Industrial  Efficiency,"  by  Frederic  S.  Lee. 
t  "Fatigue  and  Efficiency,"  page  n. 


Horns  ioi 

out  speed,  complexity,  monotony,.pjec<i  work  and  over- 
time, and  such  influences  as  noise  and  mechanical 
rhythms.  The  long  day  of  agriculture  was  probably 
an  evil.  Certainly  the  last  few  generations  have  wit- 
nessed the  efforts  of  millions  in  every  industrial 
country  to  escape  from  country  life.  But  harmful  as 
twelve  hours  and  more  are  in  rural  labor,  their  fatigu- 
ing effects  are  greatly  accentuated  in  factories  because 
of  these  new  stresses  of  industrialism.  Any  one  who 
has  ever  seen  the  inside  of  a  textile  factory,  a  machine 
shop,  or  even  a  telephone  exchange,  must  be  at  least 
dimly  aware  of  the  increased  intensity  of  work  due  to 
modern  mechanical  methods.  The  more  progressive 
states  and  the  labor  unions  have  sought  to  mitigate 
this  by  establishing  the  eight-hour  day,  and  some,  with 
the  Saturday  half -holiday,  have  inclined  to  the  forty- 
four  hour  week,  while  a  rare  pioneer  has  experimented 
with  the  six-hour  day.  Strictly  from  the  standpoint 
of  health  there  is  perhaps  no  unvarying  formula  which 
may  be  applied.  Dr.  Lee,  who  on  these  matters  is  as 
well  qualified  as  any,  has  said : 

"One  is  treading  on  dangerous  ground  if  he  attempts 
to  predict  an  optimum  working  day  without  an  analysis 
of  the  work  itself.  The  fact  is  unmistakable,  however, 
that  most  of  the  reliable  evidence  at  present  points  toward 
an  approximation  of  the  eight-hour  working  day  as 
affording  for  a  considerable  variety  of  occupations  and 
for  conscientious  workers  the  best  condition  for  high 
productivity."  * 

American  states  have  regulated  the  hours  of  labor 
for  three  different  groups. f    First  of  all,  the  working 

*  "The  Human  Machine,"  page  36. 

t  Harvard   Law   Review,    Vol.    29,    pages    353-373,    by   Felix 
Frankfurter. 


Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

hour?  -of  women,  and  children  were  shortened  by  legal 
enactment.  Later,  the  hours  of  all  workers  employed 
in  dangerous  or  peculiarly  unhealthful  employments 
were  determined  by  the  law;  and  finally,  a  beginning 
has  been  made  toward  the  state  regulation  of  the  hours 
of  work  in  industry  generally. 

The  state's  right  to  interfere  in  behalf  of  workers 
has  been  grudgingly  conceded  by  the  courts  after  long 
struggles  and  many  contradictory  decisions.  The  pro- 
cedure in  many  of  these  cases  has  been  extremely  inter- 
esting. One  of  the  historic  episodes  was  the  invalida- 
tion of  an  eight-hour  law  for  women  by  the  Illinois 
Supreme  Court  in  1895.*  The  court  there  held  that 
the  attempt  of  the  state  to  protect  women  against  a 
working  day  which  the  legislature  thought  to  be  dan- 
gerous to  their  health  was  a  "purely  arbitrary  restric- 
tion upon  the  fundamental  right  of  the  citizen  to  con- 
trol his  or  her  own  time  and  faculties."  The  suit  which 
resulted  in  the  annulment  of  the  law  was  in  fact 
brought,  however,  not  by  women  who  wished  to  work 
long  hours  but  by  paper  box  manufacturers  who  wished 
to  employ  them  for  longer  periods  than  the  law  sanc- 
tioned. That  method  of  attack  upon  legislation  de- 
signed to  safeguard  wage  earners  has  been  thoroughly 
characteristic  of  the  long  struggle.  Manufacturers  who 
insisted  upon  protection  for  themselves  by  way  of  tariff 
measures  and  with  other  legal  devices  have  continued 
to  contest  the  right  of  their  employees  to  the  safeguards 
of  the  law  and  by  an  ironical  extension  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  liberty  have  sued  in  the  name  of  workers  for 
a  freedom  which  in  fact  was  oppression. 
*  Ritchie  v.  People,  155  Illinois  98. 


Hours  103 

For  years  after  legislatures  were  first  persuaded  of 
the  need  to  protect  workers  against  hours  of  labor 
which  jeopardized  health,  and  which  denied  the  leisure 
prerequisite  to  normal  social  and  political  life,  the 
courts  continued  to  offer  a  refuge  for  those  employ- 
ers who  by  an  amazing  inversion  of  reality  essayed  to 
preserve  for  their  employees  such  fictitious  rights. 
Courts  trailed  legislatures.  Now,  however,  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court  has  in  notable  cases  affirmed  the 
power  of  legislatures  to  regulate  working  hours.  The 
California  Act,  limiting  the  work  of  women  in  certain 
industries  to  forty-eight  hours  per  week,  was  upheld 
by  the  Supreme  Court,  which  thereby  marked  a  period 
in  this  development.*  One  of  the  most  significant 
aspects  of  this  change  in  the  positions  taken  by  courts 
is  to  be  found  in  the  increasing  reliance  put  upon  scien- 
tific testimony  concerning  the  actual  consequences  of 
industrial  employment  upon  workers.  The  shift  in 
method  was  manifested  in  the  nature  of  the  arguments 
offered  by  Louis  D.  Brandeis  when  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court  sustained  the  constitutionality  of  the 
Oregon  ten-hour  law  for  women  employed  in  any 
mechanical  establishment,  factory,  or  laundry.  Courts 
previously  had  been  relying  on  what  was  called  "com- 
mon knowledge"  concerning  the  effects  of  industry 
upon  workers,  as  they  applied  the  principle  of  the  free- 
dom of  contract  and  determined  the  application  of  the 
police  power  in  these  affairs.  But  it  has  been  ob- 
served that  this  "common  knowledge"  was  often 
"popular  error,"  and  accordingly  in  the  Oregon  litiga- 

*  Miller  v.  Wilson,  236  U,  S.  373  J  Bosley  v.  McLaughlin,  236 
U.  S.  385. 


IO4  Indttstry  and  Human  Welfare 

tion  Mr.  Brandeis — later  Justice  of  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court — assisted  by  Miss  Josephine  Gold- 
mark,  publication  secretary  of  the  National  Consum- 
ers' League,  summarized  the  extant  scientific  literature 
upon  the  issue  before  the  court  in  order  to  set  forth 
what  was  in  reality  the  world's  experience.*  Again  in 
1914,  by  similar  reasoning,  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  sustained  the  Oregon  ten-hour  law  for  labor  in 
factories.!  Regulation  of  the  hours  of  men's  labor 
by  legislation  is  developed  far  less  than  that  for  women. 
The  explanation  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  attitude 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  which  has  gen- 
erally opposed  the  state  regulation  of  men's  hours  of 
labor  because  of  the  fear  of  weakening  union  organ- 
ization, and  in  the  further  fact  that  public  opinion  is 
not  awake  to  the  desirability  of  restricting  men's  hours 
of  work.J 

One  of  the  illuminating  discoveries  concerning  the 
effects  of  fatigue  has  been  that  workers  often  produce 
more  in  a  short  working  day  than  in  a  long  one.  The 
most  interesting  finding  of  this  nature  was  obtained 
in  consequence  of  an  inquiry  by  the  United  States 
Public  Health  Service.  Two  plants,  one  working  on 
the  ten-hour  system  and  the  other  using  the  eight- 
hour  shift,  were  the  basis  of  perhaps  the  most  pains- 
taking study  ever  made  in  this  field.  In  summary  it 
was  reported  that  "a  comparison  of  the  eight-hour 
and  the  ten-hour  system  leads  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  eight-hour  system  is  the  more  efficient."  This 

*  Miiller  v.  Oregon,  U.  S.  412,  1908. 

t  Bunting  v.  Oregon,  243  U.  S.  246,  37  Supreme  Court  435,  1917. 

t  "Principles  of  Labor  Legislation,"  248. 


Hours  105 

greater  efficiency  was  evidenced  by  a  steady  mainte- 
nance of  output  during  the  shorter  day  as  contrasted 
with  a  declining  output  during  the  ten-hour  day,  the 
reduction  of  lost  time  to  a  minimum  under  the  eight- 
hour  system,  and  the  prevalence  of  an  artificial  re- 
striction of  output  under  the  ten-hour  system,  and  also 
by  other  data  obtained  in  the  course  of  the  inquiry.* 

This  conclusion,  which  is  supported  by  some  of  the 
findings  made  by  investigations  carried  on  by  the  Brit- 
ish government,  has  been  challenged  by  the  National 
Industrial  Conference  Board,  an  organization  of  Amer- 
ican employers'  associations.  In  a  study  entitled 
''Practical  Experience  with  the  Work  Week  of  Forty- 
Eight  Hours  or  Less,"  the  Conference  Board  stated 
that  more  than  87  per  cent  of  the  plants  which  reported 
showed  that  a  reduction  of  the  work  week  to  forty- 
eight  hours  or  less  was  accompanied  by  a  decrease  in 
the  weekly  output  per  worker.  It  should  be  noted  that 
the  Conference  Board  merely  asked  questions  of  manu- 
facturers, while  the  United  States  Public  Health  Ser- 
vice made  a  long  and  scrupulous  study  of  two  estab- 
lishments using  the  eight-hour  and  the  ten-hour  shifts. 
The  Board,  however,  drew  attention  to  the  fact  that  in 
many  of  the  factories  concerning  which  it  made  inquiry 
"the  output  was  limited  almost  entirely  by  the  speed 
of  machines."  In  such  a  case  it  is  inevitable  that  a 
reduction  in  running  time  be  followed  by  a  reduction  in 
output.  The  Board  gave  support  to  the  conclusions 
of  the  Public  Health  Service  investigators,  on  the  other 
hand,  by  reporting  that  where  handwork  predominated 

*  Public  Health  Bulletin  No.  106,  page  26.    Comparison  of  an 
Eight-Hour  Plant  and  a  Ten-Hour  Plant. 


io6  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

— that  is,  where  the  human  worker  was  more  nearly 
free  to  express  himself — "it  was  possible  to  increase 
the  hourly  output  of  workers,  in  some  cases  to  the  ex- 
tent of  entirely  compensating  for  the  loss  in  working 
time  or  even  of  exceeding  the  previous  weekly  pro- 
duction." 

It  is  impossible  to  say  generally  whether  the  eight- 
hour  day,  so  long  the  goal  of  union  labor  and  social 
reformers,  is  economically  more  productive  than  the 
longer  working  day.  Experience  seems  to  differ  wide- 
ly. It  must,  albeit,  be  remembered  that  the  public 
argument  for  the  short  working  day  is  not  grounded 
in  the  belief  that  men  and  women  and  children  produce 
more  in  eight  hours  than  in  nine  or  ten  or  twelve.  It 
does  not  matter  from  the  standpoint  of  social  states- 
manship whether  eight  hours  produce  more  or  less  than 
ten  or  twelve.  As  a  consequence  of  the  experience 
of  this  country  in  the  war  incidentally  it  became  appar- 
ent that,  given  the  motive,  the  productive  capacity  of 
the  country  could  be  enormously  increased  without 
condemning  industrial  workers  to  live  in  evil  condi- 
tions. Enough  can  be  produced.  The  need  to  shorten 
hours  arises  from  the  necessities  of  workers  as  indi- 
viduals and  as  members  of  the  community.  Normal 
family  life  is  not  to  be  attained  when  men  and  women 
pour  all  their  energies  into  the  tasks  of  industrial  pro- 
duction. No  more  are  men  and  women  stripped  by  toil 
of  every  resource  of  intelligence  and  energy  able  to 
share  in  the  social  and  political  activities  of  a  free  re- 
public. The  feeling  of  the  public  in  this  matter  was 
stated  by  the  President's  Industrial  Conference  in  its 
report  of  March,  1920,  as  follows: 


Hours  107 

"The  problem  of  hours  has  undergone  a  fundamental 
change  through  the  introduction  of  large  scale  factory 
production  and  the  growing  concentration  of  our  popu- 
lation in  cities.  Men  and  women  can  work  relatively 
long  hours  at  work  which  is  interesting,  which  calls  upon 
their  various  energies,  which  gives  some  opportunity  for 
creative  self-expression.  Work  which  is  repetitive, 
monotonous  and  conducted  under  the  confining  indoor 
conditions  of  even  the  best  industrial  plant,  especially 
where  the  plant  is  located  at  a  distance  from  the  homes 
of  the  workers,  makes  much  more  exacting  physical  and 
nervous  demands.  If  the  inevitable  conditions  of  mod- 
ern industry  do  not  offer  variety  and  continuing  interest, 
the  worker  should  have  hours  short  enough  for  more 
recreation  and  for  greater  contact  with  his  fellow  work- 
men outside  of  working  hours."* 

The  changes  made  subsequent  to  the  Armistice  have 
been  so  widespread  that  it  is  difficult  to  estimate  cor- 
rectly what  are  the  prevailing  hours  of  labor  in  Amer- 
ican industry.  In  the  highly  organized  trades  the 
eight-hour  day  generally  obtains.  This  is  character- 
istic of  the  mines,  of  the  railroads — except  in  the 
operation  of  trains — and  of  the  building  industry.  In 
the  manufacturing  industries  only  slightly  affected  by 
unionism  the  nine-  and  ten-hour  working  days  are 
popular.  In  a  few  trades  such  as  the  men's  clothing 
industry  the  forty-four  hour  week  has  been  established. 
Some  light  was  thrown  on  the  question  of  working 
hours  by  an  industrial  survey  made  by  the  United 
States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  during  the  first 
months  of  1919.!  In  the  twenty-eight  industries 
studied  it  was  reported  that  for  the  payroll  period  in- 
vestigated the  average  hours  worked  per  day  were  7.6 

*  Report  of  the  Industrial  Conference  called  by  the  President, 
'March  6,  1920,  pages  32  and  33. 

t  Industrial  Survey  in  Selected  Industries  in  the  United  States,    .  y* 
1919,  Bulletin  No.  265,  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics. 


io8  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

hours  for  male  workers  and  7.5  hours  for  female 
workers.  But  this  average  reveals  almost  nothing  of 
the  normal  working  day  in  any  industry,  for  the  reason 
that  the  total  number  of  hours  worked  by  an  individual 
during  a  week  was  divided  by  the  number  of  days  and 
the  result  was  given  as  the  average.  This  took  no  ac- 
count of  lost  time.  A  man  might  have  been  employed 
twelve  hours  a  day  for  the  three  days  during  which 
work  was  given  him  and  his  average  would  have  been 
six  hours  daily,  a  totally  misleading  indication  of  his 
real  routine.  This  is  shown  by  the  tables  given  for 
individual  industries  and  processes,  where  the  average 
working  time  varies  widely.  Ethelbert  Stewart, 
United  States  Commissioner  of  the  Labor  Statistics, 
used  to  quote  a  colored  preacher  whose  children  were 
afflicted  with  badly  deformed  legs.  Some  were  bowed 
inward  and  some  outward.  But  the  sensitive  preacher 
resented  sympathy  and  argued  that  his  children's  legs 
averaged  as  well  as  any.  So,  too,  do  the  working 
hours  of  the  establishments  covered  in  this  extensive 
industrial  survey.  But  the  individuals  are  not  bettered 
by  that.  Male  blowers  in  the  blast  furnaces  of  the 
Eastern  district  were  thus  shown  to  have  been  em- 
ployed 13.9  hours  on  the  average  during  the  period 
studied  while  male  door  operators  employed  in  the 
open-hearth  furnaces  of  the  same  industry  on  the 
Pacific  Coast  averaged  only  7.2  .hours  a  day.  With 
such  variations  it  means  little  to  say  that  the  male  em- 
ployees of  the  iron  and  steel  industry  in  the  United 
States  were  employed,  during  the  short  time  investi- 
gated, 7.8  hours  per  week  day. 

The  last  great  industry  which  has  retained  the  long 


Hows  109 

working  day  of  a  century  ago  is  steel.  The  twelve- 
hour  day  and  the  seven-day  week  as  recently  as  the 
spring  of  1921  have  measured  the  working  periods 
exacted  of  a  large  number  of  the  employees  of  the  steel 
industry.*  In  the  study  of  the  entire  industry  made 
by  the  Federal  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  in  1911,  it 
was  found  that  nearly  fifty  per  cent  of  the  workers 
were  employed  on  the  twelve-hour  shift.  The  study 
made  by  John  A.  Fitch  during  1920  indicated  that  not 
much  change  had  been  made  during  the  years  following. 
In  the  spring  of  1921  the  United  States  Steel  Corpora- 
tion announced  that  it  hoped  and  expected  the  twelve- 
hour  day  would  be  abolished. 

Not  less  serious  than  the  long  working  day  is  night 
employment.  This  existed  from  the  very  beginning 
of  the  factory  system  in  this  country  and  to  some  ex- 
tent before  the  mechanical  revolution,  but  unlike  the 
twelve-hour  day  it  was  not  borrowed  from  agricul- 
ture. In  the  draft  of  his  proposal  for  the  establish- 
ment of  a  powder  factory  in  the  United  States,  in  1801, 
E.  I.  du  Pont  mentioned  to  his  French  backers  that 
four  powder  mills  then  in  operation  in  Pennsylvania 
worked  night  and  day.f  Night  work  has  grown 
greatly  with  the  factory  system.  In  some  so-called  con- 
tinuous industries,  such  as  certain  steel  processes,  it 
is  perhaps  inescapable.  In  the  steel  industry  it  has, 
however,  been  accompanied  by  enormously  long  hours 
of  work.  Often  the  men  on  the  night  shift  have  been 
engaged  thirteen  hours,  while  those  on  the  day  work 

*  See  The  Survey,  March  5,  1921,  page  783  and  following. 
t  E.  I.  duPont  de  Nemours  &  Company,  page  168. 


no  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

were  employed  eleven.    Night  work  in  itself  is  a  ser- 
ious menace  to  health. 

Admitting  the  probable  necessity  of  night  work  un- 
der various  circumstances,  Dr.  Lee  insists  that: 

"It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  human  machine  night  work  is  always  abnormal. 
Man  is  a  diurnal,  not  a  nocturnal,  animal,  and  any  at- 
tempt to  change  his  innate  habits  in  this  respect  are 
bound  to  interfere  with  his  physiological  processes. 
Man's  body  needs  the  stimulus  of  sunlight  and  is 
adapted  to  the  atmospheric  conditions  of  the  day.  Some 
of  his  physiological  processes  exhibit  a  regular  curve 
of  variation  through  the  twenty-four  hours,  one  of  the 
best  known  being  that  of  bodily  temperature,  with  its 
gradual  rise  during  the  day  to  a  maximum  in  the  late 
afternoon,  and  a  gradual  fall  to  a  minimum  in  the  early 
morning.  .  .  . 

"There  is  a  general  consensus  of  opinion  that  night 
work  is  more  deleterious  to  health  than  is  day  work, 
and  this  opinion  is  supported  by  incontestable  evidence; 
but  at  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  it  is  hardly 
possible,  nor  indeed  for  our  present  purpose  is  it  neces- 
sary, to  differentiate  between  the  deleterious  effects  per  se 
resulting  from  such  conditions  as  the  attempted  imposi- 
tion of  an  unphysiological  rhythm  and  the  lack  of  bene- 
ficial sunshine  and  the  deleterious  effects  resulting  from 
the  fact  that  under  our  social  conditions  the  day's  re- 
cuperation of  the  night  worker  is  rarely  equal  to  the 
night's  recuperation  of  the  day  worker.  Night  worV 
entails  a  diminution  of  sleep."  * 

Most  European  industrial  countries  forbid  night 
work  for  women  and  some  American  states  have  taken 
the  same  course.  The  first  International  Conference 
on  Labor  Legislation  expressed  the  general  conscience 
of  the  civilized  world  as  follows : 

"Women,  without  distinction  of  age,  shall  not  be 
employed  during  the  night  in  any  public  or  private 
undertaking  or  in  any  branch  thereof,  other  than  an 

*  "The  Human  Machine  and  Industrial  Efficiency,"  by  Frederic 
S.  Lee,  pages  61  and  68. 


Hours  in 

undertaking  in  which  only  members  of  the  same  family 
are  employed."  * 

Children  are  more  generally  safeguarded  from  the 
effects  of  night  work,  but  so  far  almost  nothing  has 
been  done  in  this  country  to  protect  men. 

The  factory  system  also  developed  enormously  the 
habits  of  Sunday  work.  In  continuous  industries  seven 
days'  work  are  not  to  be  avoided.  In  other  lines  pub- 
lic convenience  insists  upon  uninterrupted  service. 
Transportation  cannot  now  be  stopped  for  Sabbath 
observance,  although  for  a  number  of  years  the  rail- 
roads did  not  operate  on  Sunday.  In  an  estimate  made 
in  1913  on  the  basis  of  reports  made  by  the  Massachu- 
setts, New  York,  Minnesota,  and  the  United  States 
Bureau  "of  Labor  Statistics,  John  A.  Fitch  reckoned, 
taking  the  entire  country  and  including  the  non-indus- 
trial as  well  as  the  industrial  population,  that  a  total 
of  over  4,500,000  people  were  engaged  in  seven-day 
labor,  f  Sunday  work  deprives  this  vast  number  of 
people  of  leisure  and  at  the  same  time,  through  creat- 
ing excessive  fatigue,  is  a  menace  to  health.  J  The 
trade  unions  have  in  numerous  instances  sought  laws 
providing  one  day's  rest  in  seven.  In  the  United  States 
the  federal  government  and  six  states  had  by  January, 
1920,  made  enactments  embodying  this  principle.  Only 
the  statutes  of  Massachusetts,  New  York,  and  Wiscon- 
sin apply  to  factories  and  mercantile  establishments 
generally,  and  even  these  exclude  numerous  classes. 

*  The  American  Labor  Legislation  Review,  9,  Page  535- 

t  "Rest  Periods  for  Continuous  Industries."     Op.  cit.,  3 :  S3- 

i'The  Human  Machine  and  Industrial  Efficiency/'  page  47- 


H2  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

The  laws  of  the  other  states  and  of  Congress  on  this 
subject  are  narrowly  restricted. 

The  early  Sunday  laws  in  this  country,  of  which 
there  were  many,  were  designed  to  protect  the  Sabbath 
from  man.  The  more  recent  laws  have  been  aimed 
at  the  protection  of  man  from  industry.  Both  types 
have  been  sustained  by  the  courts.*  The  practical  con- 
sequence of  such  a  law  in  the  case  of  the  really  con- 
tinuous industries  is  to  enlarge  the  working  force  by 
one-sixth  so  that  all  may  have  one  free  day  a  week 
and  at  the  same  time  the  establishment  be  kept  fully 
manned.  The  advantage  of  a  weekly  day  of  rest  even 
from  the  material  standpoint  of  production  was  made 
apparent  by  the  inquiries  of  the  British  Health  of 
Munitions  Workers'  Committee,  which  in  the  midst  of 
the  war  reported : 

"If  the  maximum  output  is  to  be  secured  and  main- 
tamed  for  any  length  of  time,  a  weekly  period  of  rest 
must  be  allowed.  Except  for  quite  short  periods,  con- 
tinuous work,  in  their  view,  is  a  profound  mistake.  On 
economic  and  social  grounds  alike  this  weekly  period  of 
rest  is  best  provided  on  Sunday."  t 

Machinery,  the  labor  saving  invention,  thus  through 
the  exactK'i.s  it  has  levied  upon  human  nature,  has  con- 
vinced public  opinion  of  the  need  of  shortening  the 
hours  of  toil.  During  many  decades,  however,  the  dur- 
ation of  work  was  not  shortened  by  the  factory  sys- 
tem. Instead,  to  the  long  hours  of  agriculture  were 
added  night  work  and  Sunday  work.  Now  the  tide 
has  turned  and  while  adequate  leisure  and  even  suffi- 

*  "Principles  of  Labor  Legislation,"  1920  edition,  page  278. 
t  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  Bulletin  221,  page  8. 


Hows  113 

cient  rest  for  the  great  majority  are  objectives  still  to 
be  realized,  already  science  has  provided  the  sanction 
and  industry  itself  has  supplied  the  means  for  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  more  wholesome  and  happier  way  of 
life. 


CHAPTER  VI 

REGULARITY   OF   EMPLOYMENT 

NOT  less  important  in  the  lives  of  workers  than  the 
fatiguing  and  destructive  effects  of  excessive  and  un- 
physiologic  hours  of  labor,  is  the  periodical  denial  of 

4  the  opportunity  to  work  at  all.  That  is  a  distinct  prod- 
uct of  the  mechanical  revolution.  Industry  makes 
irregular  demands  for  human  labor.  Seasonal  needs, 
the  cycles  of  business,  changes  within  industries, 
these  and  other  factors  tend  to  make  the  employment  of 
workers  in  industry  seem  to  be  almost  capriciously  un- 
certain, Unemployment  for  wage  earners  means  a 
cessation  of  income  and  dire  anxiety.  Changing  sea- 
sons and  cycles  of  business  are  obviously,  however,  not 
new  phenomena.  "Manufacture"  was  irregular  in  its 
demand  for  workers  before  the  first  power  factory 
was  established.  Business  cycles  were  not  unknown 
to  the  economic  observers  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Nevertheless,  in  reality  machine  industry  did  of  itself 
give  rise  to  the  modern  phenomenon  of  unemploy- 

,  ment. 

The  explanation  of  this  is  in  part  to  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  the  factory  system  demanded  specializa- 
tion and  a  division  of  labor  among  its  workers  and 
that  it  segregated  operatives  in  cities.  As  has  been 
observed  previously,  early  American  artizans — in  so 


Regularity  of  Employment  115 

far  as  they  were  freemen — were  not  dependent  upon  a 
single  vocation.  Tench  Coxe  described  workers  who 
were  gardeners  and  small  farmers  when  they  were  not 
following  their  trade.  When  the  demand  for  shoes 
failed,  the  shoemaker,  for  instance,  was  not  totally 
unemployed.  He  had  other  work.  The  produce  of 
his  garden,  his  chickens  and  pig  and  cow,  the  posses- 
sion of  a  home  for  which  he  paid  little  or  no  rent, 
gave  him  a  security  which  his  great-grandchildren  en- 
tirely lack,  unless  they,  too,  dwell  in  small  villages. 
"Hard  times"  oppressed  the  land  long  before  factor- 
ies were  founded,  but  the  American  laborer  and 
mechanic  was  certain  of  shelter,  of  food,  and  of  clothes, 
poor  in  quality  as  these  often  were.  Poverty  of  course 
existed.  Never,  perhaps,  has  been  the  time  when  there 
were  no  poor,  but  it  was  chiefly  the  poverty  of  the 
sick,  of  the  widowed,  of  the  unfit.  Enormous  varia- 
tions in  the  opportunity  to  work  did  not  then  curse 
the  great  mass  of  the  population.  Agriculture,  by 
which  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  people  lived, 
is  seasonal,  but  in  this  country  it  knew  little  unemploy- 
ment. For  most  life  passed  at  a  low  but  unvarying 
level.  Conditions  were  endured  which  would  appear 
intolerable  to-day  to  the  descendants  of  those  who  were 
pioneers,  but  life  was  secure  and  if  there  was  for  the 
majority  small  hope  of  attaining  ease  there  was  less 
anxiety  over  sudden  economic  disaster  or  over  the  con- 
tinuance of  life  itself. 

Unemployment  and  the  fear  of  unemployment  are 
twin  evils  created  by  the   factory  system.     Industry, 
destroyed  man's  old  sense  of  safety,  and  in  the  United 
States  little  has  been  done  to  make  good  this  great 


n6  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

loss.  The  possibility  of  being  workless  and  without 
income  hangs  over  the  great  majority  of  wage  earners. 
The  factory  worker  of  to-day  knows  only  a  fractional 
part  of  the  trade  he  pursues.  He  knows  little  else  that 
he  could  turn  to  account.  He  must  live  by  his  trade  or 
•not  at  all.  In  order  to  obtain  employment  he  must 
ordinarily  reside  in  congested  cities,  where  the  possi- 
bility of  subsidiary  means  of  support  are  denied  him. 
Usually  he  does  not  own  the  house  or  the  tenement  he 
lives  in.  He  neither  cultivates  nor  harvests  the  vege- 
tables and  fruits  which  his  family  consumes.  If  he  is 
able  to  eat  eggs  or  to  drink  milk  he  obtains  these  articles 
from  dealers  who  are  themselves  far  removed  from  the 
scene  of  actual  production.  His  clothes  are  bought,  not 
made  at  home.  The  modern  factory  worker  must  re- 
tain his  job  if  he  wishes  to  continue  alive,  and  yet  he 
knows  from  bitter  experience  that  at  recurrent  inter- 
vals, regardless  of  zeal  or  fitness,  many  men  and 
women  will  not  be  employed.  His  constant  question  is 
"Am  I  next  to  go?"  That  condition,  unemployment 
and  the  more  harassing  dread  of  unemployment  which 
it  engenders,  are  among  the  most  serious  reproaches 
which  the  conscience  of  humanity  must  level  at  modern 
industry. 

The  conventional  attitude  toward  unemployment 
regards  it  as  one  of  the  inescapable  evils  of  mankind. 
It  seems  to  be  a  blight  sent  to  distress  the  race,  an  ill 
inevitable  because  it  appears  to  be  the  result  of  some 
obscure  law  of  nature.  That  position,  never  rational, 
has  now  few  informed  defenders.  In  his  distinguished 
book  "Unemployment:  A  Problem  of  Industry,"  Sir 
JVilliam  H,  Beveridge  (page  14)  made  it  apparent  that 


Regularity  of  Employment  117 

unemployment  is  a  normal  and  not  an  abnormal  mani- 
festation of  industry.  Irregularity  of  production  is  a 
part  of  the  expected  routine.  This  conclusion  is  ren- 
dered plain  enough  by  a  consideration  of  the  varying 
sums  of  the  products  of  industry.  Studies  recently 
made  show  the  fluctuations  in  the  actual  physical  vol- 
ume of  the  products  of  American  manufacturies  during 
the  years  from  1899  to  1919.  These  decades  were,  on 
the  whole,  marked  by  tremendous  expansion,  but  year 
by  year  there  were  violent  ups  and  downs.  The  figures 
giving  these  variations  are  not  merely  indices  of  pro- 
duction. With  as  great  vividness  they  show  the  course 
of  employment  and  unemployment.  As  Professor  Day 
points  out,  "The  years  1902,  1905-7,  1912,  1916-17, 
were  years  of  especially  large  production;  1900-01, 
1908,  1911,  1914,  1919,  years  of  particularly  low  pro- 
duction." *  A  tremendous  slump  in  production  oc- 
curred during  1908.  This  threw  millions  of  men  and 
women  out  of  work.  In  his  interesting  attempt  to 
reckon  the  ebb  and  flow  of  employment  in  American 
cities,  Hornell  Hart,f  speaking  of  the  period  between 
1902  and  1917,  said: 

"The  number  of  unemployed  in  cities  of  the  United 
States  (entirely  omitting  agricultural  labor,  for  which  no 
reliable  data  are  now  available)  has  fluctuated  between 
1,000,000  and  6,000,000.  The  least  unemployment  oc- 
curred in  1906-1907  and  in  1916-1917,  while  the  most 
occurred  in  1908  and  in  1914  and  1915.  The  average  num- 
ber unemployed  has  been  two  and  a  half  million  workers, 
or  nearly  ten  per  cent  of  the  active  supply." 

*  Edmund  E.  Day,  "The  Review  of  Economic  Statistics" 
January,  1921 ;  page  20. 

t  "Fluctuations  in  Employment  in  Cities  of  the  United  States, 
1902  to  1917,"  by  Hornell  Hart.  Helen  S.  Trounstine  Foundation, 
Cincinnati,  Vol.  i,  No.  2. 


n8  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

This  conclusion  is  similar  to  the  opinions  of  most 
students  of  the  subject.  The  number  of  employees  in 
New  York  state  factories  at  the  time  of  inspection 
were,  for  example,  compiled  for  the  years  1901  to  1909 
inclusive.  Marked  differences  are  found.  The  decade 
was  one  of  remarkable  growth  but  there  was  a  large  de- 
crease in  employment  during  1908.  Fewer  workers 
were  employed  in  New  York  factories  during  1909 
than  during  1906.  More  than  eleven  per  cent  of  the 
factory  population,  or  128,874  individuals,  was  thrown 
out  of  work  in  1908.*  These  variations  are  charac- 
teristic. "We  find  in  the  industrial  centers  of  this 
state,"  said  the  New  York  State  Commission  on  Em- 
ployers' Liability  and  Unemployment  of  1911,  "at  all 
times  of  the  year,  in  good  times  as  well  as  in  bad, 
wage  earners  able  and  willing  to  work  who  cannot 
secure  employment."  The  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics 
study  made  during  March  and  April,  1915,  showed 
that  in  sixteen  Eastern  and  Middle  Western  cities  15 
per  cent  of  the  families  having  policies  in  the  Metro- 
politan Life  Insurance  Company  were  suffering  from 
unemployment.  A  similar  study  made  during  June 
and  July,  1914,  in  twelve  Rocky  Mountain  and  Pacific 
Coast  cities  had  reported  15.3  per  cent  unemployed,  a 
striking  demonstration  of  how  widespread  the  condi- 
tion of  unemployment  was  during  those  years.f  Unem- 
ployment by  its  undulations  registers  the  movement  of 
the  business  cycle,  with  its  veering  swings  from  pros- 
perity to  depression.  Industry  may  in  time  be  stabil- 

*  Report  of  New  York  State  Commission  on  Employers'  Lia- 
bility and  Unemployment,  Third  Report,  1911,  page  4. 
t  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  Bulletin  195. 


Regularity  of  Employment  119 

ized  so  that  these  cyclical  fluctuations  cease  to  deny 
the  opportunity  of  work  to  millions,  but  for  the  imme- 
diate future  at  least  this  process  must  be  expected  to 
continue.  At  the  beginning  of  1921  the  United  States 
Employment  Service  sent  out  questionnaires  and  on 
the  basis  of  the  information  thus  obtained  estimated  , 
that  5,000,000  wage  earners  were  unemployed  during 
the  summer  of  1921.  The  American  Federation  of 
Labor  made  a  similar  estimate. 

Not  only  do  these  cyclical  fluctuations  of  business 
and  industry  deprive  millions  of  the  opportunity  to 
work  and  to  earn  but  there  are  also  seasonal  varia- 
tions in  the  demand  for  workers  which  result  in  an 
enormous  burden  of  underemployment  and  unemploy- 
ment. Certain  occupations  are  inherently  seasonal. 
Agriculture  is  the  perfect  example,  but  better  far  than 
industry,  agriculture,  except  in  the  harvest  fields,  cares 
for  its  own.  The  seasonal  character  of  many  industries 
diminishes  the  actual  earnings  of  the  people  employed. 
The  number  of  wage  earners  employed  in  the  manu- 
facturing industries  of  the  country  varies  greatly  by 
months.  The  Census  of  1910*  recites  the  figures  for 
1909  and  1904.  During  1909  Hornell  Hart  estimated 
that  there  were  on  the  average  2,100,000  persons,  ex- 
cluding agricultural  workers,  unemployed.  The  vari- 
ations for  the  months  among  those  who  had  jobs  were 
great.  The  census  showed  that  November  was  the 
month  of  high  employment.  January  was  the  low 
month.  In  November  the  manufacturing  industries 
gave  employment  to  approximately  800,000  more 
workers  than  in  the  preceding  January.  From  month 

*  "Manufactures,"  Vol.  8,  page  276. 


120  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

to  month  there  were  violent  changes  in  the  demand  for 
workers.  A  difference  of  more  than  thirteen  per  cent 
marked  fluctuating  requirements  of  the  manufactur- 
ing industries  during  1909.  During  1904,  when  ac- 
cording to  the  Hart  reckonings  2,400,000  workers 
were  on  the  average  unemployed,  the  difference  be- 
tween the  high  month  and  the  low  month,  October 
and  January  in  this  year,  was  upwards  of  seven  per 
cent.  The  census  figures  for  principal  industries  show 
with  even  greater  clarity  the  seasonal  demands  for 
human  service  and  the  accompanying  unemployment. 
The  iron  and  steel  trade  has  been  called  the  barometer 
of  industry.  During  December,  1909,  certain  estab- 
lishments in  this  industry  employed  283,629  workers. 
In  March,  however,  nearly  a  quarter  fewer,  or  only 
215,076  had  been  hired.  In  foundry  and  machine  prod- 
ucts there  was  a  difference  of  nearly  twenty  per  cent 
in  the  number  of  those  employed  in  January  and  De- 
cember. These,  moreover,  were  the  more  stable  indus- 
tries. Others  showed  very  wide  variations.  Brick 
and  tile  manufactures  employed  104,930  in  July,  1909, 
but  only  38,312  in  January.  Glass  manufactures  em- 
ployed 40,222  in  July  and  81,665  m  December.  Feb- 
ruary, March,  April  and  May  are  the  heavy  months 
in  the  tanning  industry  in  New  York.*  Fluctuations  in 
advertising  reduce  the  sizes  of  newspapers  and  the 
numbers  employed.  These  are  not  the  extreme  cases. 
The  sugar  and  molasses  industry,  which  shows  the 
widest  differences,  employed  only  3.5  per  cent  of  the 
people  in  February  who  were  on  its  payrolls  in  Novem- 

*  New  York  State  Commission  on  Employers'  Liability  and 
Unemployment,  page  4. 


Regularity  of  Employment  121 

her.  These  differences  month  by  month  are  not  ab- 
normal expressions.  Seasonal  demand  is  character- 
istic. Thus  it  happens  that  in  fat  years  as  well  as  in 
lean,  there  are  week  by  week  vast  numbers  of  workers 
who  are  unable  to  secure  employment. 

Industry  is  subject  to  other  variations,  not  attribu- 
table to  business  cycles  of  prosperity  and  depression 
or  to  seasonal  demands.  Industries  rise  in  importance 
and  then  go  down.  The  experience  of  the  war  exem- 
plified this  perfectly.  When  the  Armistice  came  thou- 
sands of  workers  were  engaged  in  making  gas  masks. 
Vast  numbers  were  employed  in  other  forms  of  the 
munitions  manufactures.  Suddenly  the  need  for  gas 
masks  stopped  and  all  those  whose  lives  had  been  de- 
voted to  that  purpose  were  suddenly  cast  adrift.  Less 
dramatically  this  process  continually  recurs.  The 
automobile  industry  grew  enormously  during  the 
decade  ending  in  1910,  but  the  census  of  that  year 
showed  71  industries  which  decreased  their  labor  force 
during  the  decade.  This  waxing  and  waning  of  pro- 
duction is  one  of  the  persistent  facts  of  industrial 
organization. 

Unemployment  and  irregular  employment  result  in 
low  and  variable  earnings.  The  earnings  of  cotton 
mill  workers,  even  during  years  when  the  factories 
work  relatively  regularly,  vary  widely.  A  family  of 
six  wage  earners  together  thus  earned  $32.75  one  week 
and  the  following  week  only  $17.70.*  The  greatest 
irregularity  of  earnings  was  found  to  be  experienced 
both  in  the  Southern  and  Northern  mills.  The  ex- 
perience of  a  Fall  River  family,  consisting  of  three 

*  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  16,  page  156. 


122  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

wage  earners,  epitomizes  the  situation.  The  period 
from  May  i,  1908,  to  April  30,  1909,  was  covered  by 
the  inquiry.  During  the  first  week  of  this  period  the 
joint  earnings  of  this  family  were  $7.66.  The  second 
week  the  total  income  was  $2.30.  The  third  week  it 
had  risen  to  $22.02.  The  last  nine  weeks  of  the  year 
studied  there  was  no  income  at  all  because  there  was 
no  work.  The  average  weekly  income  was  $19.52, 
and  the  total  for  the  year  was  $839.51.*  The  textile 
industry,  however,  is  counted  among  the  more  stable. 
Figures  obtained  from  New  York  trade  unionists 
showed  that  on  the  average  union  workers  were  losing 
about  a  fifth  of  their  normal  earnings  because  of  un- 
employment and  underemployment,  f  Theoretically, 
for  instance,  stage  hands  at  that  time  earned  on  the 
average  $720  a  year.  Their  actual  average  earnings 
were  some  $432  annually.  Trade  unionists  in  the 
clothing  and  textile  trades  worked  at  pay  rates  which 
normally  would  have  produced  an  average  income  of 
$975.66  a  year.  The  actual  average  was  $710. 

This  marked  reduction  of  annual  earnings  is  one 
of  the  outstanding  consequences  of  irregular  work. 
These  decreases  and  the  fluctuating  earnings  entail 
many  serious  consequences.  Undernourishment  of 
the  worker  and  his  family,  harassing  anxiety,  enforced 
idleness  and  drifting — these  are  some  of  the  influences 
which  rack  millions  of  workers.  No  more  pathetic 
figure  is  to  be  found  than  the  strong,  skillful  craftsman, 
eager  for  the  opportunity  to  work  and  to  earn,  and 

*  "Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners,"  Vol.  16,  page  246. 
t  New  York  Commission  on  Employers'  Liability  and  Unem- 
ployment, page  8. 


Regularity  of  Employment  123 

yet  sentenced  to  idleness  while  his  dependents  suffer. 
The  picture  of  such  men  skulking  in  their  own  homes 
after  futile  searches  for  employment,  while  their  wives 
go  out  in  pursuit  of  odd  tasks  as  domestic  servants  in 
order  to  keep  the  family  together  and  avoid  the  dread 
appeal  for  charity,  is  desolate  beyond  words.  Pre- 
cariousness  of  existence  for  wage  earners  is  one  of 
the  clear  consequences  of  the  industrial  revolution. 
The  premature  work  of  children  and  the  forced  em- 
ployment of  mothers — these,  too,  are  the  gifts  of 
irregular  industry.  The  strong  endure  anxiety  and 
deprivation  while  the  weak  and  the  less  fortunate  are 
forced  to  seek  public  aid.  Involuntary  unemployment 
was  a  factor  in  the  situation  of  more  than  one-fourth 
of  the  cases  closed  by  the  New  York  Charity  Organ- 
ization Society  during  the  year  of  the  report  of  the 
New  York  State  Commission  on  Unemployment  of 
1911. 

Migratory  and  casual  workers  existed  long  before 
the  factory  system.  In  a  certain  sense,  of  course,  the 
pioneers  were  themselves  migratory  workers.*  Wan- 
dering gangs  of  navvies  were  employed  clearing  the 
forests  in  the  South,  digging  canals  and  building 
levees,f  at  the  very  moment  when  the  factory  system 
was  being  developed.  The  itinerant  Irishmen,  inci- 
dentally, were  counted  of  less  economic  value  than  the 
negroes  owned  on  the  plantations,  and  they  fared  far 
worse.  Their  status  was  assuredly  lower  than  that 
of  the  casual  who  is  to-day  employed  in  building  a 

*"One   Thousand   Homeless   Men,"  by  Alice  Willard   Solen- 
berger. 
t  "American  Negro  Slavery,"  by  W.  B.  Phillips,  page  301. 


124  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

factory  or  a  railroad.  None  the  less,  in  a  peculiar 
way  modern  industry  has  created  a  new  class  of 
wandering  workers.  Construction  work,  specialized 
agriculture,  itself  a  by-product  of  modern  industry  and 
highly  seasonal  occupations,  have  enlarged  this  class  of 
laborers  who  are  employed  from  day  to  day  and  often 
only  by  the  hour.  The  logging  industry  demands 
its  casuals,  as  do  the  various  branches  of  construction. 
In  ordinary  years  thousands  of  workers  pass  many 
months  of  idleness  in  cheap  hotels  and  lodging  houses 
of  the  great  cities.  Seattle,  Chicago,  Kansas  City, 
New  York,  are  the  great  gathering  places  for  this 
unfortunate  class  of  semi-employed  workers. 

The  human  cost  of  irregular  employment  is  incal- 
culable. The  purely  economic  loss  is  also  enormous, 
as  studies  of  "labor  turnover"  have  shown.*  In  ad- 
dition to  the  direct  cessations  of  employment,  a  constant 
change  of  workers  adds  its  burdens  to  the  waste  of 
industry.  Ninety  shops  in  the  New  York  cloak,  suit 
and  skirt  industry  employed  on  the  average  1,435 
workers  for  the  year  ending  July  31,  1913,  but  during 
that  time  a  total  of  4,858  persons  were  hired.  An 
incessant  stream  of  workers  passed  through  these  estab- 
lishments. Various  estimates  of  the  incessant  loss 
from  labor  turnover  have  been  made.  A  study  of  costs 
of  electric  railway  service  showed  that  the  expense  of 
training  a  trainman  on  a  Milwaukee  electric  railway 
was  not  less  than  $217.29.  The  Jeffrey  Manufactur- 
ing Company  reckoned  that  the  cost  of  breaking  in 
a  new  man  averaged  about  $100.  The  Dennison  Man- 
ufacturing Company  reckoned  the  cost  of  replacing 

*  "The  Turnover  of  Factory  Labor,"  by  Sumner  H.  Slichter. 


Regularity  of  Employment  125 

experienced  workers  in  its  establishment  at  $50  each.* 
The  amount  of  actual  damage  which  inexperienced 
workers  do  combines  with  their  smaller  productivity 
to  augment  the  cost  of  labor  turnover  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  employer.  The  difference  in  the  accident 
rate  of  experienced  and  of  inexperienced  workers, 
as  shown  by  a  number  of  street  railway  studies,  is 
great.  The  total  cost  to  American  industry  of  labor 
turnover  must  approximate  a  sum  comparable  to  the 
German  indemnity.  The  endless  ' 'hiring  and  firing," 
an  essential  part  of  the  insecurity  of  the  present,  af- 
fects workers  in  various  ways.  Earnings  are  stopped 
during  the  time  of  unemployment  before  a  new  job  is 
obtained;  the  finding  of  work  involves  expense,  and 
earnings  are  apt  to  be  low  while  the  new  tasks  are 
learned.  In  addition  the  worker  is  demoralized  by 
the  constant  shifting. 

The  unending  movement  of  men  and  women  in  and 
out  of  establishments  is  in  part  the  cause  and  in  part 
the  result  of  a  constant  excess  of  workers.  A  group 
of  woolen  mills  employing  between  11,000  and  13,000 
hired  18,214  workers  in  1907;  in  1908,  12,932;  in 
1909,  18,225;  in  1910,  15,188,  the  size  of  the  force,  as 
Mr.  Slichter  has  pointed  out,  undergoing  relatively 
little  change  during  these  years.  This  turnover  is  the 
motion  which  measures  the  extent  of  the  reservoir  of 
labor.  Exclusive  of  farm  laborers  this  unemployed 
reserve  ranges  year  by  year  from  one  million  to  six 
million  workers,  according  to  the  reckonings  of  Hor- 
nell  Hart.  The  army  of  available  workers  is  increased 

*"The  Turnover  of  Factory  Labor,"  by  Sumner  H.  Slichter, 
page  132. 


126  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

through  immigration.  The  migration  of  European 
peoples  to  the  United  States  has  been  largely  an  ill- 
regulated  response  to  America's  industrial  demands. 
In  part  it  has  been  a  movement  stimulated  by  employ- 
ers of  labor,  who  have  generally  been  discontented 
with  the  higher  level  of  wages  paid  in  this  country. 
Immediately  after  the  Civil  War,  for  example,  the 
American  Emigrant  Society  was  organized  to  supply 
American  employers  with  imported  workers.  The  ex- 
pression of  the  purpose  of  this  original  society  was 
more  frank  than  is  now  customary.  An  employer  de- 
siring workers  had  only  to  make  his  needs  known.  The 
company  charged  a  fee  of  $i  on  application  for  work- 
ers and  on  their  delivery  charged  $10  for  each  skilled 
worker,  $6  each  for  agricultural  workers,  $5  each  for 
house  servants  and  $5  each  for  boys  learning  a  trade.* 
Congress  was  induced  as  early  as  the  Civil  War  period 
so  to  frame  laws  as  to  attract  immigrants  to  this 
country.  The  history  of  most  of  the  great  industries 
is  a  history  of  successive  waves  of  immigration. 

Real  need  for  workers  to  man  the  growing  industrial 
establishments  has  competed  with  the  desire  of  em- 
ployers to  have  a  full  reserve  of  labor.  From  the  days 
of  the  American  Emigrant  Society  until  the  Immigra- 
tion Act  of  1921  was  passed  there  was  no  break  in 
this  effort  to  pour  new  workers  into  the  reservoir  of 
American  industry.!  Between  July  i,  1900,  and  June 
I,  1918,  14,298,018  immigrants  came  into  this  country; 

*  "Social  and  Industrial  Conditions  in  the  North  During  the 
Civil  War,"  by  Emerson  David  Fite,  page  192. 

f  Statements  of  Inter-racial  Council,  1920,  estimating  a  need 
of  4,000,000  additional  workers  in  the  United  States  and  urging 
renewed  immigration  from  Europe. 


f 


Regularity  of  Employment  127 

and  yet,  as  Professor  Lescohier  has  observed,  in  every 
day  and  month  when  these  millions  were  coming  idle 
men  and  women  have  vainly  sought  work  in  every  city 
and  town  of  the  United  States.*  This  reserve  labor 
has  rendered  employment  irregular  at  all  times  for 
many;  it  has  kept  earnings  low  for  the  reason  that 
the  law  of  supply  and  demand  steadily  operated  against 
wage-earners — once  the  free  lands  were  exhausted,  re- 
moving the  competition  which  the  early  manufacturers 
had  faced;  and  it  has  increased  the  sum  of  unemploy- 
ment during  hard  times.  "Extra"  workers  are  the 
characteristic  expression  of  a  system  of  industry  which 
demands  a  supply  of  idle  men  and  women  to  be  held  in 
waiting  for  the  time  of  maximum  production.  In  the 
cotton  mills  work  is  irregular,  among  other  reasons, 
because  ordinarily  there  have  been  more  workers  than 
jobs.  Consequently,  as  previously  noted,  the  average 
weekly  income  of  the  worker  is  seldom  or  never  the 
same,  and  the  Commissioner  of  Labor  was  impelled  to 
report  to  the  United  States  Senate  in  1911,  following 
the  investigation  at  Fall  River,  Massachusetts,  that  "in 
the  entire  study  there  was  not  one  individual  found 
whose  earnings  were  sufficient  to  support  a  normal 
family  according  to  the  fair  standard." 

The  measures  proposed  to  deal  with  the  numerous 
evils  and  maladjustments  summed  up  in  the  term  ir- 
regular employment  are  many.  They  are  of  three 
varieties — ameliorative,  informational,  and  preventive. 
Until  comparatively  recently,  little  statistical  data  con- 
cerning employment  in  the  United  States  existed  and 
even  now  precise  information  is  available  only  for  a 
*  "The  Labor  Market,"  by  Don  S.  Lescohier,  page  9. 


128  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

few  states  and  cities  at  specified  intervals.  The  great 
effort  has  been  to  obtain  facts  so  that  on  a  diagnosis  of 
reality  valid  social  statesmanship  might  be  built.  The 
only  sound  means  of  obtaining  a  continuing  picture  of 
the  fluctuations  of  employment  are  to  be  found  in  the 
establishment  of  a  public  employment  service.  For 
public  employment  offices  serve  the  dual  function  of 
connecting  workers  with  opportunities  for  employment 
and  of  obtaining  current  knowledge  concerning  the  de- 
mand for  workers  and  the  supply  of  those  in  search 
of  employment.  In  this  country  the  national  labor 
exchanges  of  Great  Britain  have  been  the  general 
model  although  opinions  differ  as  to  whether  the  work 
should  be  done  by  the  states  or  by  the  federal  govern- 
ment. Prior  to  the  World  War  the  United  States  had 
made  no  real  effort  to  create  an  employment  service. 
During  the  summer  of  1918  the  United  States  Em- 
ployment Service  was  established.  The  primary  object 
of  the  organization  was  to  supply  workers  to  the  war 
industries,  and  when  the  war  was  over  Congress  re- 
duced the  service  to  impotence.  It  marks  a  begin- 
ning, however,  and  through  the  stimulus  it  gave  to 
state  and  municipal  employment  offices,  advanced 
greatly  the  idea  of  a  system  of  public  employment  ex- 
changes. Valuable  contributions  to  the  knowledge  of 
employment  conditions  in  this  country  were  obtained 
through  the  federal  service,*  especially  of  the  waste  in- 
volved in  a  hapless  distribution  of  migratory  workers 
to  the  harvest  fields.  The  public  employment  service, 
whether  national,  state,  or  municipal,  is  of  value  also 

*  See  Annual  Reports  of  the  Director  General,  U.  S.  Employ- 
ment  Service. 


Regularity  of  Employment  129 

in  that  it  removes  the  heavy  toll  exacted  by  private 
employment  agencies  upon  those  seeking  work.  The 
tax  upon  the  opportunity  to  earn,  levied  by  those  who 
make  a  commodity  of  jobs,  has  been  a  serious  evil  in 
the  industrial  life  of  the  nation. 

The  establishment  of  public  employment  offices  has 
been  the  first  long  step  in  the  abolition  of  unemploy- 
ment, for  although  an  employment  service  cannot  in- 
crease the  sum  of  work  in  existence  at  any  time,  it  does 
render  more  available  the  existing  jobs  and  it  sup- 
plies data  on  which  policies  may  be  built.  The  methods 
used  to  regularize  industry  and  so  to  modify  fluctua- 
tions in  employment  differ  according  to  the  industry. 
From  the  standpoint  of  the  public  the  most  promising 
program  has  been  that  of  postponing  public  works  from 
times  of  prosperity  to  seasons  of  depression.*  In  a  few 
cities  and  states  the  policy  of  deferring  public  im- 
provements until  hard  times,  in  the  belief  that  such 
a  policy  would  tend  to  mitigate  some  of  the  effects  of 
the  depression,  has  been  developed.  This  program 
calls  for  foresight  but  it  involves  no  extraordinary  ex- 
penditures on  the  part  of  the  public.  Unnecessary  im- 
provements are  not  undertaken,  but  needed  work  is 
postponed  and  reserved  for  the  time  of  want. 

Industries,  and  especially  individual  firms,  have  in 
places  made  efforts  to  stabilize  employment  and  to 
create  unemployment  insurance  funds.  One  of  the 
first  instances  of  this* in  the  United  States  was  the  ex- 
periment made  by  a  Boston  shoe  factory,  where  pre- 
viously workers  had  been  employed  on  an  average  about 
100  days  a  year.  By  means  of  a  selling  campaign  and 

*See  The  Survey  for  January  8,  1921,  page  530. 


130  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

through  other  devices  the  demand  for  shoes  was  more 
widely  distributed  throughout  the  year.  A  Cleveland 
clothing  firm  also  was  conspicuously  successful  in  stab- 
ilizing the  production  of  clothes.  The  Dennison  Man- 
ufacturing Company,  of  Framingham,  Massachusetts, 
has  also  been  a  notable  pioneer  in  the  stabilization  of 
employment.  The  method  used  in  this  case  was  to  de- 
velop certain  standard  articles  which  could  be  manufac- 
tured far  in  advance  of  their  time  of  sale.  Efforts  are 
now  being  made  to  devise  a  system  of  removing  irreg- 
ularity from  the  coal  industry.  The  country  was 
shocked  in  the  autumn  of  1919  when  the  United  Mine 
Workers  in  the  bituminous  fields  demanded  a  six-hour 
day  and  a  five-day  week.  The  demand  seemed  less 
preposterous,  however,  when  it  was  learned  that  never 
in  the  history  of  the  industry  had  the  miners  had  the 
opportunity  to  work  as  many  days  and  hours  as  their 
demand  involved.*  By  the  development  of  storage  and 
marketing  facilities  and  in  other  ways  it  is  possible 
for  the  more  intelligent  industrial  manager  largely  to 
reduce  irregular  employment.  Detailed  suggestions 
were  formulated  for  a  number  of  industries  by  the 
President's  Conference  on  Unemployment  during  Oc- 
tober, 1921,  and  an  interesting  proposal  for  modifying 
the  extremes  of  the  business  cycle  was  offered. 

Less  intelligent  and  more  selfish  employers  have,  how- 
ever, little  native  interest  in  the  human  consequences 
of  underemployment  and  unemployment  and  conse- 
quently it  is  not  possible  to  rely  solely  upon  the  initia- 
tive of  the  managers  of  industry.  Methods  have  to  be 
devised  both  to  stimulate  employers  to  reduce  un- 

*See  The  Survey  for  November  22,  1919,  page  151. 


Regularity  of  Employment  131 

employment  and  to  relieve  the  necessities  of  those  for 
whom  work  is  not  provided.  One  of  the  most  interest- 
ing attempts  to  create  stimuli  of  this  character  was  ex- 
pressed in  a  bill  introduced  in  the  Wisconsin  legisla- 
ture during  1921.  This  measure  frankly  was  modeled 
on  the  insurance  principle  which  has  been  found  useful 
in  the  reduction  of  work  accidents.  Each  industry  and 
each  business  would  by  this  proposal  be  compelled  to 
insure  against  unemployment  just  as  insurance  against 
industrial  accidents  is  now  exacted.  Workers  actually 
unemployed  would  be  given  relief  in  accordance  with 
the  familiar  principles  of  the  British  unemployment 
system.  The  insurance  rate  which  the  individual  con- 
cern would  pay  would  be  based  on  the  risk  it  presented. 
The  natural  desire  of  the  insurer  to  reduce  the  pre- 
miums would  accordingly  induce  him  to  endeavor  to 
decrease  unemployment  in  his  own  establishment.  The 
Wisconsin  bill  would  create  a  board  competent  to 
advise  individual  establishments  concerning  the  most 
effectual  means  of  stabilizing  production  and  employ- 
ment.* 

The  goal  to  be  reached  is  the  elimination  of  irregular 
work  or,  at  least,  of  irregular  income.  The  road  to 
be  traveled  is  plain  and  still  the  distance  to  be  over- 
come is  great.  Consequently  during  the  future,  im- 
mediate and  perhaps  distant,  much  reliance  must  be 
found  in  a  system  of  unemployment  insurance.  Great 
Britain  has  in  this  field  the  largest  amount  of  expe- 
rience. In  this  country  neither  the  individual  states 
nor  the  United  States  have  actually  created  unemploy- 
ment insurance  systems  although  a  growing  public 

*  See  The  Survey  for  March  19,  1921,  page  880. 


132  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

opinion  supports  the  proposal.  Every  individual  has 
in  American  theory  hitherto  been  able  to  provide  per- 
sonally against  the  irregularities  of  work.  The  long 
rolls  of  the  charity  organization  societies  during 
times  of  depression  show  how  fallacious  that  assump- 
tion has  been.  Nor  is  the  belief  that  trade  unions 
are  able  adequately  to  assure  their  members  against 
unemployment  well  founded.  Out  of  in  national 
organizations  affiliated  with  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor  only  the  Cigar  Makers'  Union  has  developed 
an  extensive  national  system  of  unemployment  insur- 
ance.* It  is  inconceivable  that  workers  as  individuals 
or  as  members  of  trade  unions  should  be  able  to  pro- 
vide adequate  insurance  against  the  emergency  of  un- 
employment. Earnings  are  too  low  and  too  irregular 
to  sanction  such  a  hope. 

Unemployment  must  be  relieved  by  the  agency 
which  created  large-scale  industry.  Each  industry 
must  bear  its  own  burden.  The  government  which 
has  so  consistently  aided  the  managers  and  owners  of 
the  factory  system  must  give  its  own  guidance  and 
direction  to  the  healing  of  this  chronic  disease  of  con- 
temporary civilization.  The  belief  of  practical  states- 
men on  this  matter,  so  long  neglected  m  the  United 
States,  was  clearly  expressed  by  the  first  International 
Labor  Conference  held  under  the  auspkes  of  the 
League  of  Nations  at  Washington,  during  1919,  in 
the  recommendation  that  every  member  nation  of  the 
league  establish  "an  effective  system  of  unemployment 
insurance,  either  through  a  government  system  or 
through  a  system  of  government  subvention  to  asso- 

*  "Principles  of  Labor  Legislation,"  page  442. 


Regularity  of  Employment  133 

ciations  whose  rules  provide  for  the  payment  of  bene- 
fits to  their  unemployed  members."  Insurance  will 
not  of  itself  eradicate  unemployment,  but  it  may  sup- 
ply the  stimulus  to  action  without  which  relief  might 
be  indefinitely  postponed.  The  resources  with  which 
to  provide  for  the  needs  of  the  individuals  unemployed 
are  abundant.  Through  mechanical  industry  society-' 
has  been  enabled  to  produce  more  than  can  be  con- 
sumed normally.  '  The  factory  system  has  with  its 
storehouses  brought  a  security  to  society.  But  the 
individual  worker  has  not  been  permitted  to  share  in 
this  cessation  from  anxiety  concerning  positive  want. 
Statesmanship  surely  owes  to  the  workers  whose  ef- 
forts have  made  possible  the  creation  and  the  accumu- 
lation of  material  possessions,  so  characteristic  of  mod- 
ern society,  a  program  of  remedial  action  which  will 
render  economic  security  a  common  possession. 


CHAPTER  VII 

HAZARDS   OF   INDUSTRY 

INDUSTRIAL  accidents  and  diseases  are,  paradoxically 
speaking,  among  the  most  hopeful  indications  of  the 
factory  system.  This  is  true  because  the  recent  neces- 
sity to  pay — even  though  inadequately — for  the  dam- 
age done  workers  by  industry  has  showed  the  almost 
unsuspected  potentialities  of  social  control.  Insur- 
ance against  work  accidents  gave,  and  continues  to  give, 
enormous  impetus  to  a  positive  movement  for  safety. 
This  effort  to  achieve  safety  by  avoiding  the  condi- 
tions which  result  in  mishaps  has  foreshadowed  the 
range  of  society's  power  to  determine  an  environment. 
Workmen's  compensation  laws  created  the  force  which 
induced  men  to  seek  to  discover  ways  of  reducing  the 
frequency  of  accidents.  The  insurance  rates  paid  so 
vary  that  the  factory  which  is  safe  for  workers  had 
low  premiums,  while  a  dangerous  plant  must  pay 
highly  for  its  hazards.  This  money  stimulus  has  be- 
come a  genuine  incentive  whose  social  product  is  the 
modern  safety  movement.  Humanitarianism  has 
also,  of  course,  been  a  factor  in  the  prevention  of  acci- 
dents, but  the  superior  influence  has  been  the  insurance 
rating. 

The  development  of  industry  greatly  increased  the 
number  and  variety  of  work  accidents  and  diseases, 

134 


Hazards  of  Industry  135 

although  industrial  hazards  existed  long  before  ma- 
chinery was  first  put  to  work.  Seafaring,  fishing, 
pioneering,  historically  were  conspicuously  dangerous 
enterprises.  The  work  of  laborers  on  canals  and  public 
roads  and  in  other  large-scale  construction  was  tre- 
mendously costly  in  human  health  and  life.  It  has 
been  observed  that  wandering  gangs  of  navvies  were 
at  times  hired  to  perform  heavy  labor  in  the  South 
because  the  owners  of  negro  slaves  were  unwilling  to 
risk  their  property  at  such  dangerous  labor.  Service 
in  the  line  of  duty  maimed  and  killed  men  a  hundred 
years  ago,  or  thousands  of  years  ago  for  that  matter, 
but  the  injuries  done  were  probably  less  frequent  or 
less  obvious  than  those  which  result  from  present-day 
industry.  At  any  rate,  the  situation  gave  rise  to  no 
considerable  body  of  literature.  Until  recent  years, 
moreover,  accidents  suffered  or  diseases  developed  in 
the  course  of  employment  were  purely  individual  dis- 
asters for  which  neither  employers  nor  the  state  were 
legally  responsible.  The  hazards  of  the  sea  were  tra- 
ditional. A  mishap  there  to  a  man  or  a  ship  was 
euphemistically  termed  "an  act  of  God"  by  way  of  in- 
dicating possibly  the  lack  of  legal  liability  which  the 
owner  of  the  vessel  felt  for  the  victims  of  the  disaster. 
Traveling  even  on  land  was  extremely  dangerous.  To 
go  from  New  York  to  Charleston  in  1800  was  as  risky 
as  exploration  of  remote  regions  of  the  world  to-day. 
Workmen  suffered  injuries  in  the  course  of  employ- 
ment, but  during  the  early  years  of  the  republic,  in- 
stead of  compensating  for  their  trouble  the  state  was 
more  inclined  to  punish  them  for  their  misfortunes. 
About  the  time  the  factory  system  was  getting  its 


136  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

roots  well  planted  in  this  country,  the  jails  were  filled 
with  debtors.  Upwards  of  a  thousand  were  in  the 
New  York  bridewell  during  the  course  of  a  single  year. 
The  man  who  was  injured  and  who  suffered  unem- 
ployment thereafter  almost  inevitably  fell  into  debt. 
Society  had  no  mercy  for  him.  If  an  unfriendly  cred- 
itor chose  to  have  him  imprisoned,  such  a  victim  of 
industry  had  no  other  recourse  but  to  go  to  jail.  The 
hundred  years  and  more  which  have  bounded  the  in- 
dustrial revolution  have  also  measured  a  complete 
change  in  public  sentiment  so  far  as  these  matters  are 
involved.  The  change  is  probably  due  in  no  small 
way  to  the  fact  that  the  workers,  unenfranchised  a  cen- 
tury ago,  have  now  risen  to  a  new  political  and  social 
status,  in  which  they  refuse  to  endure  the  iniquities 
of  the  former  era. 

Until  1837  the  legal  relationship  between  an  em- 
ployer and  an  employee  did  not  differ  from  the  rela- 
tionship between  strangers.  No  especial  liability  for 
injuries  to  his  workmen  was  borne  by  an  employer. 
"If  A  was  hurt  solely  by  B's  neglect  (and  not  by  his 
own  fault),  B  was  bound  to  compensate  A  whether  A 
was  an  employee  or  not."  *  As  industry  was  created 
r.in  larger  units,  and  as  man's  safety  became  more  de- 
pendent on  the  conduct  of  others  over  whom  he  had  no 
control,  the  menace  of  industrial  accidents  became  in- 
creasingly recognized.  The  old  common  law  principles 
suggested  by  the  legal  rules  of  contributory  negligence, 
fellow  servant's  negligence,  and  the  assumption  of  risk 
became  inadequate.  Men  began  to  see  that  just  as 

*  First  Report  New  York  Commission  on  Employers'  Liability, 
1910,  page  n. 


Hazards  of  Industry  137 

unemployment  was  a  witness  of  the  fact  that  industry 
is  irregular  in  its  demand  for  human  service,  so,  too, 
industry  year  by  year  inflicts  a  certain  number  of  in- 
juries and  deaths  upon  those  employed.  The  imper- 
sonal system  of  production,  and  not  a  fellow  worker, 
became  in  the  eyes  of  the  public  and  finally  in  the  minds 
of  the  legislators  and  courts  the  moving  cause  of  the 
injury.  Having  understood  this,  the  public  followed 
its  logic  and  began  to  create  a  system  of  insurance 
against  work  accidents  designed  to  lift  a  part  of  the 
burden  inflicted  by  industry  from  the  shoulders  of 
the  wage  earners.  This  principle  has  been  widely  ac- 
cepted in  the  United  States  and  very  interesting  prac- 
tical consequences  have  followed  from  it.  The 
Illinois  Supreme  Court  has,  for  example,  lately  held 
that  a  heat  stroke  may  be  an  industrial  accident  within 
the  meaning  of  the  state  compensation  act.  An  en- 
gineer employed  at  a  municipal  pumping  station  died 
on  a  very  hot  day  from  heat  stroke.  The  excessive 
heat  of  the  engine  was  declared  to  be  a  contributory 
cause  of  the  man's  death  and  compensation  was  paid. 
Another  recent  case  involved  a  man  who  was  killed  by 
one  of  his  fellow  workers.  The  fact  that  the  killing 
occurred  during  the  course  of  employment  brought 
the  episode  within  the  scope  of  the  compensation  law 
and  induced  the  court  to  uphold  the  payment  of  in- 
surance to  the  widow.* 

The  change  marked  by  such  decisions  as  these  is  one 
of  the  most  notable  in  the  history  of  the  United  States. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  any  new  policy  was  so  rapidly 

*  Proceedings  of  the  Casualty  Actuarial  and  Statistical  Society 
of  America,  November,  1920,  page  112. 


138  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

accepted  once  a  beginning  of  success  had  been  at- 
tained. The  first  permanent  compensation  legislation 
was  enacted  by  Washington  and  Kansas  on  March 
14,  1911.  Wisconsin,  whose  law  was  the  first  to  be- 
come effective,  acted  on  May  3,  1911.  Within  the 
decade  following  42  states  and  3  territories  have  en- 
acted workman's  compensation  statutes  and  the  United 
States  government  has  amended  the  federal  act  to 
include  all  civil  employees.*  The  rapidity  of  this  de- 
velopment was  almost  revolutionary  but  the  causes 
which  produced  it  were  great.  A  familiar  comparison 
collates  the  number  of  those  killed  and  injured  by  in- 
dustry and  by  wars.  Cumulatively,  the  casualties  of 
industry  are  incomparably  more  numerous.  Frederick 
L.  Hoffman  reckoned  that  the  probable  approximate 
number  of  fatal  accidents  among  American  wage 
earners  during  1913  could  be  conservatively  placed  at 
25,000  and  the  number  of  injuries  involving  disability 
of  more  than  four  weeks  at  700,000. f  This  was  the 
estimate  of  an  insurance  statistician.  One  of  the  most 
recent  accountings  is  that  of  the  American  Red  Cross.  J 
A  study  of  insurance  tables  and  of  government  figures 
led  to  the  conclusion  that  industrial  accidents  now 
cause  the  deaths  of  more  than  22,000  persons  annually 
in  the  United  States.  Of  every  10,000  Americans  em- 
ployed during  1918,  seven  were  killed.  The  fatalities 
in  industry  during  that  year  alone  thus  were  forty- 
five  per  cent  of  the  number  of  Americans  killed  in 

*  Comparison  of  Workmen's  Compensation  Laws  of  the  U.  S. 
and  Canada,  by  Carl  Hookstadt,  Bulletin  275,  U.  S.  Bureau  of 
Labor  Statistics. 

t  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  Bulletin  157,  page  6. 

$  American  Red  Cross  News  Release,  June  5,  1921. 


Hazards  of  Industry  139 

battle  during  the  World  War.  The  number  of  serious 
injuries  suffered  in  the  course  of  service  is  appallingly 
large.  During  1919,  for  example,  the  American  Red 
Cross  calculated  that  some  3,400,000  disabilities  due 
to  industrial  accidents  were  suffered  by  workmen  and 
that  during  the  year  over  680,000  workers  were  laid 
up  for  four  weeks  or  longer  from  non- fatal  industrial 
accidents.  The  reckoning  of  the  Red  Cross  was  re- 
duced to  the  following  table,  showing  the  number  of 
industrial  accidents  resulting  in  death  during  1918 :  * 

INDUSTRIAL  ACCIDENT  DEATHS  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES,  1918. 

Men  Total       Rate  per  10,000 

Industry  Group           Employed       Accidents  Employed 

Total 30,106,256  21,356  7.1 

Coal  Mining 762,425  2,580  33.8 

Metal  Mining 182,606  646  334 

Iron  and  Steel  Employees       527,150  603  11.4 

Quarries 68,332  125  18.3 

Smelting  (not  iron)  and 

Ore  Dressing 61,708  77  12.5 

Steam  and  Street  Rail- 
ways      1,839,229  3,569  19-4 

Fisheries 67,036  201  30.0 

Navigation 147,478  457  31-0 

Lumber  Industry 635,638  953  15.0 

Building 2413,283  3,039  12-5 

Watchmen,  Police,  etc...        176,974  *33  7-5 

Telephone  and  Telegraph       134,071  67  5.0 

Electricians 134,071  102  22.5 

Draymen,  Teamsters,  etc       407,557  408  10.0 

Agriculture 10,613,083  3,715  3-5 

Manufacture 5,145,656  1,286  2.5 

Other  Employed  Males. .     6,789,939  3,395  5-O 

This  estimate  is  subject  to  the  criticism  applicable 
to  all  attempts  to  portray  precisely  the  general  situation 
in  this  country.  As  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics 
has  pointed  out,  the  records  of  deaths  and  injuries  are 

*  Estimates  based  on  the  U.  S.  Labor  Statistics  Reports  and 
accident  rates  of  large  industrial  groups  in  insurance  companies. 


140  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

so  variously  tabulated  by  different  state  authorities 
that  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  combine  state 
reports  with  any  certainty  that  the  sum  will  be  statis- 
tically exact.*  For  single  industries  and  individual 
states,  however,  the  facts  are  well  known.  Accidents 
in  coal  mining  are,  for  example,  reported  by  the  Bureau 
of  Mines,  while  railroad  casualties  are  recorded  by  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Commission.  Uniform  reporting 
by  the  states  is  prerequisite  to  an  adequate  compre- 
hension of  the  full  implications  of  industrial  accidents, 
but  even  now  the  situation  has  been  explored  sufficient- 
ly to  render  plain  the  things  which  must  be  done  in 
order  to  repair  in  so  far  as  is  possible  the  damage  in- 
flicted. Nothing  obviously  requites  a  man  for  the 
loss  of  a  hand  or  a  leg  or  an  eye,  or  of  his  skill.  Still 
less  can  money  make  good  the  loss  of  a  life.  But  in- 
surance can  compensate  in  part  for  the  money  losses 
which  result  from  industrial  accidents. 

At  the  last  survey  it  was  reported  that  about  sev- 
enty per  cent  of  the  employees  of  the  country  were 
protected  by  compensation  insurance.  About  eight 
million  employees,  including  agricultural  laborers,  are 
not  covered  by  such  insurance,  and  in  addition  to  these 
about  1,400,000  interstate  railway  employees  are  with- 
out protection.  Agricultural  workers  are  scarcely  pro- 
tected at  all,  despite  the  fact  that  while  their  rate  of 
casualty  is  low  the  absolute  number  of  deaths  due  to 
farming  pursuits  is  estimated  to  be  greater  than  that 
attributable  to  any  other  division  of  labor.f  The  de* 

*  Monthly  Labor  Review,  January,  1921,  page  159. 

t  Comparison  of  Workmen's  Compensation  Laws  of  the  United 
States  and  Canada,  up  to  January,  1920,  by  Carl  Hookstadt, 
page  33. 


Hazards  of  Industry  141 

gree  of  protection  accorded  by  the  laws  of  various 
states  also  differs  widely.  Although  no  two  states  have 
identical  compensation  provisions,  Mr.  Hookstadt  has 
pointed  out  that  two  factors  generally  operate  in  de- 
termining the  amounts  to  be  paid.  These  are  the  loss 
of  earning  capacity  suffered  and  the  resultant  social 
need.  The  old  conception  of  punitive  damages  which 
was  involved  in  the  common  law  has  been  completely 
wiped  out.  Compensation  plans,  ignoring  the  moral 
question  of  negligence,  seek  impersonally  to  provide 
for  contingencies  which  may  be  foreseen.  The  actual 
scale,  varying  with  the  degree  and  duration  of  the 
disability  suffered,  is  usually  based  on  the  earning 
capacity  of  the  injured  worker.  It  ranges  from  50 
to  66  2/3  per  cent  of  the  wages  paid  at  the  time  of 
the  accident. 

In  all  of  the  United  States,  except  in  a  few  Southern 
states,  workmen's  compensation  is  now  well  estab- 
lished. Many  of  the  laws  are  inadequate,  but  the  prin- 
ciple has  at  least  been  asserted.  Provision  against  in- 
dustrial disease  is  much  less  advanced.  In  many  ways 
industry  gives  rise  to  disease  among  workers.  Specific 
poisons,  such  as  lead  compounds,  are  absorbed  and  pro- 
duce disability,  disease,  and  even  death.  Physical  con- 
tact with  other  classes  of  substances  result  in  specific 
affections,  such,  for  example,  as  anthrax.  Fumes  and 
dust  incident  to  work  eventuate  in  tuberculosis  and  in 
other  respiratory  diseases.  The  constant  use  of  par- 
ticular muscles  occasions  other  maladies.  In  addi- 
tion to  these  a  wide  miscellany  of  sicknesses,  such  as 
caisson  disease,  must  be  attributed  to  industry.  The 
very  scope  of  production  under  modern  conditions  has 


142  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

exposed  workers  to  new  perils.  In  addition  to  these 
ills,  which  can  be  clearly  traced,  fatigue  and  strain  pre- 
pare the  way  for  many  other  diseases  not  inherently 
connected  with  an  occupation.*  Fatigue,  it  has  been 
suggested,  may  be  accounted  as  one  of  the  chief  causes 
of  disease. f  Speaking  from  this  point  of  view,  Sir 
George  Newman,  the  distinguished  public  health  au- 
thority, observes  that  "whilst  at  first  sight  accidents, 
poisoning,  and  a  high  occupational  death  rate  are  im- 
pressive, it  cannot,  I  think,  be  doubted  that  the  less 
dramatic  side  of  the  problem  is  the  more  important — 
namely,  the  lost  time  and  incapacity  due  to  ill  health. 
For  this  is  so  widely  prevalent  as  to  be  almost  univer- 
sal, in  all  districts,  at  all  ages,  in  all  trades.  There  is  a 
vast  mass  of  wasted  life  and  energy  due  for  the  most 
part  to  preventable  maladies — in  their  turn  largely  at- 
tributable to  remediable  conditions  of  industry  or  to 
the  neglect  of  hygiene."  J  What  Dr.  Newman  says  of 
England  probably  portrays  fairly  the  conditions  in 
this  country.  A  study  made  by  the  Bureau  of  Labor 
Statistics  of  workmen's  sickness  and  death  benefit 
organizations  of  New  York  showed  that  the  entire 
membership  averaged  6.3  days?  sickness.  §  The 
United  States  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations  said 
in  its  final  report  that  "each  of  the  thirty-odd  mil- 
lion wage  earners  in  the  United  States  loses  an  aver- 
age of  nine  days  a  year  through  sickness."  ||  The 

*  "Fatigue  and  Efficiency/'  by  Josephine  Goldmark. 

t'The  Human  Machine  and  Industrial  Efficiency,"  page  79. 

i  "The  Health  of  the  Industrial  Worker/'  by  Collis  and  Green- 
wood. 

§  Report  of  the  Illinois  Health  Insurance  Commission,  1919, 
page  13- 

(I  Final  Report,  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations,  page  202. 


Hazards  of  Industry  143 

Illinois  Health  Insurance  Commission,  whose  report 
is  one  of  the  best  American  studies  in  this  field,  re- 
marked concerning  this  estimate  that  "the  data  ob- 
tained from  our  various  investigations  warrant  the 
conclusion  that  this  is  only  a  slight  overstatement  of 
the  average  time  lost."  * 

Disability  due  to  disease  which  arises  out  of  occu- 
pation is  accordingly  probably  far  more  common  even 
than  industrial  accidents.  Still,  it  has  been  found 
extraordinarily  difficult  to  give  protection  against  the 
full  range  of  industrial  diseases  in  workmen's  com- 
pensation sy stems,  f  Only  a  few  states  attempt  to 
compensate  workers  disabled  by  sickness  and  these 
have  been  able  to  reach  only  a  few  individuals.  The 
benefits  of  the  law  are  extended  chiefly  when  the  dis- 
ease manifests  itself  in  some  sudden  bodily  derange- 
ment or  if  it  can  be  traced  to  a  definite  time  and  place, 
or  if  the  employer  has  neglected  to  provide  safeguards 
which  might  reasonably  have  been  expected  to  have 
prevented  the  injury.J  The  measures  proposed  to 
combat  the  human  suffering  and  the  national  losses 
due  to  occupational  diseases  are  general  health  insur- 
ance, and  preventive  and  protective  health  activities  by 
individual  plants  and  industries,  and  by  the  various 
branches  of  the  government. 

It  should  be  possible  with  the  growth  of  public  opin- 
ion to  extend  compensation  insurance  systems  or  else 
to  ally  them  with  health  insurance  so  that  the  human 
wastage  of  industry  may  be  prevented.  To  do  this 

*  Illinois  Health  Insurance  Report,  page  n. 
t "American  Labor  Legislation  Review"  by  John  B.  Andrews, 
8:  311. 
$  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  Bulletin  275,  page  53. 


144  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

effectively,  as  Dr.  Royal  Meeker,  chief  of  the  scien- 
tific division  of  the  International  Labor  Office  has 
pointed  out,  workers  injured  in  any  way  by  industry 
must  be  restored  as  completely  and  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible ;  money  benefits  must  be  paid  so  that  the  worker 
and  his  family  may  live  during  the  enforced  idleness; 
retraining  must  be  provided  those  who  cannot  be  re- 
turned to  their  former  tasks ;  the  opportunity  for  work 
should  be  sought  through  a  proper  public  employment 
system ;  and  facilities  for  continuing  medical  care  must 
be  accorded  the  injured  worker  to  the  end  that  recov- 
ery may  be  attained.  When  these  things  are  done, 
society,  which  created  the  modern  industrial  system  for 
its  own  comfort  and  service,  will  have  begun  at  least  to 
atone  for  the  injuries  done  millions  of  workers  by  the 
incidental  grind  of  a  machine  system  of  production. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  STATUS  OF  WORKERS 

THE  rise  of  the  factory  was  coincident  with  a  political 
and  social  revolution.  In  attempting  to  estimate  the 
effects  of  mechanical  industry  upon  the  well-being  of 
workers,  it  is  accordingly  necessary  to  distinguish  be- 
tween these  two  influences.  It  is  manifestly  impos- 
sible to  say  what  might  have  happened  to  workers  had 
waterpower  and  the  energy  of  steam  never  been  har- 
nessed to  machines,  but  it  is  entirely  clear  that  even 
prior  to  the  invention  of  the  basic  machines  which 
served  to  create  the  beginnings  of  the  factory  age  the 
position  of  wage  workers  in  society  had  begun  to  be 
altered.  Political  and  social  tendencies  were  con- 
spicuous, even  though  they  had  not  already  borne 
their  full  fruit  when  the  first  factories  were  built. 
These  liberating  political  and  social  movements  fol- 
lowed the  logic  of  their  own  nature  in  spite  of  the 
sometimes  conflicting  influences  generated  by  the  new 
industrial  system.  The  position  of  workers  to-day  is 
consequently  the  resultant  of  these  diverse  forces. 

Artizans,  mechanics,  and  laborers  were  largely  unf  ree 
when  the  foundations  of  the  first  factories  were  being 
dug.  No  wage  earner,  unless  he  was  also  a  property- 
owner,  could  vote.  South  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line 
artizans  were  slaves  or  indentured  servants.  In  Penn- 

H5 


146  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

sylvania  much  work  was  done  by  the  so-called  redemp- 
tioners,  the  German  immigrants  who  paid  for  their 
passage  overseas  by  giving  four  years'  labor  or  more 
to  employers  who  advanced  the  funds  required  for  emi- 
1  gration.  Industrially  the  United  States  was  half  slave 
and  half  free  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and 
the  first  President  of  the  new  nation  was  himself  the 
master  of  an  establishment  where  under  the  ancient 
handicraft  system  cloth  was  fabricated  by  bonds- 
women.* Artizans  of  various  crafts  were  offered  for 
sale,  the  black  men  as  slaves  and  the  white  as  inden- 
tured servants.  The  unfree  worker  who  quit  his  ap- 
pointed tasks  could  be  disciplined,  and  the  man  who 
ran  away  might  be  arrested  and  returned.  The  free 
workers  of  the  Northern  states  were  not  represented 
politically  and,  if  one  may  judge  by  the  expressions 
of  members  of  Congress  and  of  delegates  to  consti- 
tutional conventions  where  suffrage  was  being  consid- 
ered, they  were  not  highly  regarded.  The  social  and 
political  status  of  workers  has  been  revolutionized. 
Universal  manhood  and  womanhood  suffrage  obtain 
and  while  in  practice  casual  laborers  and  negroes  are 
often  deprived  of  the  vote,  race  and  a  wandering  life, 
rather  than  caste  or  property  distinctions,  maintain 
the  barriers. 

In  the  North  the  first  manufacturers  were  often  ar- 
tizans  who  with  money  loaned  by  merchants  or  farm- 
ers were  able  to  begin  business  in  a  small  way. 
Reporting  for  Connecticut  in  1832,  H.  L.  Ellsworth, 
for  example,  informed  Louis  McLane,  Secretary  of 

*"A  Documentary  History  of  American  Industrial  Society," 
2:  324- 


The  Status  of  Workers  147 

the  Treasury,  that  "many  of  the  manufactories  are 
small  and  carried  on  by  the  owner  and  his  family, 
with  little  additional  help."  *  The  figures  submitted 
by  Mr.  Ellsworth  substantiated  this  statement.  Estab- 
lishments employing  three,  four,  five  and  six  operatives 
were  characteristic.  In  the  north,  merchants  in  the 
larger  towns  were  the  chief  possessors  of  wealth.  The 
rise  of  factories  created  a  new  and  property-holding 
class,  who  in  time  were  to  dispute  the  supremacy  of 
the  merchants.  The  artizans  who  became  the  proprie- 
tors and  managers  of  factories  were  obviously  enor- 
mously bettered  by  the  mechanical  revolution  but  it 
is  not  with  the  well-being  of  those  who  rose  to  afflu- 
ence that  society  is  now  chiefly  concerned. 

The  fortunes  of  the  men  and  women  who  did  not 
emerge,  and  who  in  the  mass  have  no  prospect  of 
emerging,  are  immediately  significant.  Not  only,  how- 
ever, do  the  artizans  and  laborers  of  to-day  enjoy 
political  and  social  rights  which  were  denied  their 
forefathers,  but  also  for  them  education  has  become 
general.  A  hundred  years  ago  workers  yearned  vainly 
for  the  dignifying  influences  of  a  system  of  public 
schools.  To-day  attendance  at  school  is  compulsory, 
and  certainly  in  the  larger  cities  the  opportunity  for 
education  is  all  but  universal.  The  laborer  of  to-day 
thus  not  only  exercises  political  privileges  which  were 
denied  his  predecessors  four  generations  ago,  but  also 
through  education  he  has  been  assisted  in  utilizing  more 
intelligently  the  political  opportunity  accorded  him. 
In  saying  this  one  does  not  forget  the  confusions  and 

*  Executive  Documents,  ist  Session,  22d  Congress,  "The  Manu- 
factures of  the  United  States,"  Vol.  i,  page  977. 


148  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

imperfections  of  the  political  and  educational  systems 
which  have  been  created.  Each  falls  far  short  of  the 
desires  of  generous  men  and  women,  but  each  marks  a 
vast  advance  over  what  existed  at  the  beginnings  of 
the  factory  age,  and  each  has  had  a  potent  influence  in 
determining  the  status  of  workers.  In  truth,  it  may 
be  added  that,  with  all  their  defects,  the  public  schools 
and  the  democratic  political  system  occasion  much  of 
the  hope  of  the  present.  In  them  lies  the  inspiration 
and  the  avenue  to  release  from  unredressed  evils. 
These  gains,  however,  are  mainly  attributable  to  the 
political  tendencies  which  exploded  in  the  American 
and  French  revolutions.  Had  there  never  been  a  fac- 
tory system,  it  is  possible  that  manhood,  if  not  woman- 
hood, suffrage  would  have  been  established,  and  even 
popular  education  might  have  come.  Such  a  leader  as 
Thomas  Jefferson  was  an  advocate  of  these  things. 
But  how  did  industry  itself  affect  the  position  of  those 
workers  who  continued  to  be  laborers  and  artizans? 

In  general  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  factory  system 
has  depressed  the  economic  status  of  artizans  and 
elevated  the  position  of  laborers.  The  experiences  of 
the  shoemakers  or  of  the  iron  molders  illustrate  this. 
The  extension  of  markets  and  the  gradual  adoption  of 
machinery  both  tended  to  degrade  the  quality  of  the 
work  done  by  journeymen  cobblers.  Prices  were 
reduced  in  a  competitive  market  and  artizans  found 
themselves  in  an  impossible  rivalry  with  factory-made 
goods  and  with  the  products  of  semi-skilled  workers 
who  were  able  and  willing  to  live  at  a  lower  standard. 
Machinery  hastened  the  process  of  substituting  laborers 


The  Status  of  Workers  149 

for  artizans.*  This  has  been  accomplished  unequally 
and  at  various  times  in  different  industries.  As  late 
as  1851  all  labor  on  shoemaking  was  handwork.  The 
McKay  sole-sewing  machine,  introduced  in  1862, 
however,  did  in  one  hour  what  the  journeyman  had 
required  eighty  hours  to  accomplish.  At  a  stroke 
the  skill  of  the  shoemaker  for  manufacturing  purposes 
was  rendered  obsolete.  The  spectacular  develop- 
ment of  the  labor  organization  known  as  the  Knights 
of  St.  Crispin,  following  the  Civil  War,  was  the  protest 
of  these  craftsmen  against  the  loss  of  a  market  for 
their  skill,  the  substitution  of  laborers  for  craftsmen, 
and  the  consequent  reduction  of  wages.  The  artizan 
able  to  perform  all  the  operations  of  his  craft  has 
tended  to  disappear  in  many  trades.  Shoe  factories 
ultimately  divided  the  cobbler's  work  into  many  opera- 
tions. Yet  the  manufacturing  system  itself  created  a 
demand  for  a  new  kind  of  skill.  Specialized  opera- 
tions, such,  for  instance,  as  cutting,  require  an  expert- 
ness  in  a  limited  field  scarcely  attained  by  the  general 
workers  of  the  handicraft  days.  The  iron  molders  are 
an  example  of  belated  transfer  from  a  handicraft  to 
a  machine  basis  of  operation.  The  long  and  bitter 
struggle  between  the  Iron  Molders'  Union  and  the 
National  Founders*  Association  arose  over  the  question 
of  the  installation  of  machinery  and  the  resultant  wage 
changes.f 

With  a  few  exceptions,  such  as  printers,  artizans 

*  "American  Shoemakers,  1648-1895,"  by  John  R.  Commons, 
Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics,  November,  1909. 

t"The  National  Founders'  Association,"  by  Margaret  Loomis 
Stecker,  Quarterly  Journal  of  Economics,  30 : 352. 


150  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

whose  trades  have  been  revolutionized  by  the  invention 
of  machines  have  been  unable  to  maintain  their  relative 
position  in  the  industrial  community.  It  is  indeed  a 
curious  and  significant  fact  that  the  craftsmen  of  to-day 
are  very  largely  men  whose  trades  have  not  been  seri- 
ously affected  by  the  introduction  of  machinery,  and 
that  these  handicraft  workers  compose  the  backbone 
of  organized  labor.  The  building  trades  workers  have 
nearly  the  same  skill  as  that  attained  by  their  fore- 
fathers, and  the  building  trades  workers  are  the  most 
powerfully  unionized.  Other  groups  which  have  ob- 
tained great  power  are  chiefly  those  who  under  machine 
conditions  have  still  been  able  to  acquire  skill.  The 
railroad  brotherhoods  are  among  the  most  potent  labor 
organizations  in  the  country.  The  strength  of  the 
railroad  unions  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  loco- 
motive engineers  and  trainmen  are  possessed  of  a 
peculiar  skill  which  is  not  quickly  imparted  and  which 
is  not  widely  distributed.  The  miners  are  another 
instance  of  men  securing  skill  and  solidarity  under  new 
conditions.  The  clothing  makers  have  completed  a 
cycle.  Tailors  originally  ranked  in  the  aristocracy  of 
artizanship.  The  introduction  of  machine  methods 
and  the  extension  of  the  competitive  market  made  con- 
ditions worse  for  the  workers,  who  largely  lost  their 
skill  as  journeymen  to  become  specialists  in  particular 
operations.  Trade  union  organization  has  in  their 
case  very  recently  restored  much  of  the  dignity  and  of 
the  economic  advantage  which  belonged  to  journeyman 
tailors.  The  textile  industries,  which  first  felt  the 
influence  of  the  factory  system,  show  from  the  stand- 
point of  craftsmanship  as  well  as  from  that  of  reward 


The  Status  of  Workers  151 

a  striking  degradation  of  labor.  The  workers  in  the 
cotton  and  woolen  and  silk  mills  have  never  been  able 
to  effect  a  powerful  organization  for  their  own  pro- 
tection. New  groups  of  workers  have  successively 
invaded  this  field.  The  skilled  workers  who  first  as 
craftsmen  and  afterwards  as  machine  tenders  were  dis- 
placed by  immigrants  and  others  willing  to  work  for 
lower  wages  suffered  seriously  by  this  change.  Yet 
both  for  the  daughters  of  American  farmers  who  were 
attracted  to  the  early  mills  and  for  the  peasants  of 
Europe  who  were  subsequently  drawn  into  the  textile 
factories,  the  shift  in  the  basis  of  the  industry  from  a 
hand  to  power-machine  process  meant  an  advance.  < 
Again  and  again  this  contrast  is  found.  Journeyman 
artizans  were  injured  by  machinery,  while  laborers  were 
lifted  to  a  higher  level  of  living  when  they  were  drawn 
into  new  work.  The  reluctance  of  skilled  workers  to 
submit  to  changes  which  implied  the  sacrifice  of  the 
cunning  of  their  hands  as  well  as  losses  in  income  has 
been  one  of  the  tragic  phases  of  the  industrial  revolu- 
tion. It  has  been  a  struggle  in  the  main  to  preserve 
status,  and  it  has  been  a  losing  struggle.  Old  values 
were  ruthlessly  destroyed  and  those  who  suffered  saw 
for  themselves  too  often  no  compensation. 

Men  and  women  became  machine  tenders.     Imper-   , 
sonal  motors  determined  the  speed  of  human  effort. 
The  leisurely  quality  of  handwork  was  lost.     Special- 
ization at  endlessly  repetitive  tasks  performed  at  a  high 
speed  injected  a  new  factor  into  the  toil  of  men  andj^ 
women.     Repetition  of  a  single  process  eliminated  the   ; 
joy  of  the  worker  who  has  a  sense  in  creation  in  his  J[; 
work.     For  most  machine  tenders   the  craftsman's 


152  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

pleasure  of  performance  does  not  exist.  Some  trade 
union  leaders  and  some  manufacturers,  however,  now 
regard  the  matter  without  misgivings.  They  assert 
that  repetitious  work  can  never  be  rendered  truly  inter- 
esting. Happiness,  accordingly,  must  be  found  outside 
of  work.  Consequently,  they  contend  that  hours  should 
be  shortened  so  that  leisure  may  exist,  and  wages 
should  be  raised  so  that  leisure  may  be  enjoyed.  That 

:  idea  is  in  itself  a  child  of  the  machine  age.  So  far  as 
men  can  now  see  there  is  in  truth  no  prospect  of  a 
change  from  repetitious  labor.  The  most  productive 
factories  are  those  in  which  standardization  is  furthest 
advanced.  Such  was  the  experience  of  the  World  War, 
during  which  much  progress  was  made  toward  placing 
industry  more  completely  on  a  foundation  of  machinery. 
With  mechanical  processes  the  United  States  can  now 
produce  more  than  it  can  consume,  as  was  shown  during 
1918,  but  with  a  return  to  manual  production  it  would 
be  impossible  to  provide  for  the  necessities  of  the  popu- 
lation. It  is  improbable  that  the  kind  of  pleasure  in 
work  of  which  William  Morris  was  the  prophet  can 
ever  be  restored  in  factories  where  men  and  women 
spend  their  days  and  nights  in  the  continual  repetition 
of  a  single  set  of  operations.  The  normal  human  mind 
is  wearied  by  monotony.  Hence  it  is  true  that  relief 
and  recreation,  as  well  as  rest,  must  be  had  beyond  the 

^working  hours.^ 

From  this  standpoint  it  can  hardly  be  argued  that 

the    factory   system  has   brought   joy   or   dignity   to 

workers.      The   hours   of   labor   were  longer   before 

machinery  imitated  the  deftness  of  human  hands,  and 

^  many  tasks  had  almost  infinitely  to  be  repeated  from 


The  Status  of  Workers  153 

the  days  when  galley  slaves  propelled  the  vessels  of 
their  conquerors.  But  the  impersonal  beat  of  ma- 
chinery has  made  demands,  never  before  approximated, 
upon  the  men  and  women  who  serve  it.  In  the  textile 
industry,  for  example,  the  rate  of  production  is  deter- 
mined by  the  speed  of  machines.  It  is  impossible  for 
the  workers  tending  the  separate  operations  to  influence 
the  rate.*  Human  beings  are  subordinated  not  im- 
mediately to  the  will  of  other  men — although,  of  course, 
some  human  will  decides  the  rate  at  which  the  engines 
move — but  to  the  motion  of  machinery.  That  this  has 
deleterious  effects  on  the  body  as  well  as  upon  the 
spirit  of  man  seems  probable  from  the  researches  of 
Philip  Sargent  Florence  and  others  for  the  United 
States  Public  Health  Service. f  The  rhythm  of  such 
machines  as  lathes  in  certain  operations  appears,  fur- 
thermore, to  drive  workers  onward  regardless  of  the 
accumulating  poisons  of  fatigue,  and  regardless  even 
of  their  ability  in  some  such  cases  to  alter  the  speed 
of  the  machine. 

Not  less  influential  than  power  machinery  itself  in 
affecting  the  status  of  workers  has  been  the  corporate 
form  of  organization  which  industry,  trade  and  trans- 
portation have  taken.  In  1830,  when  the  factory  system 
was  well  established,  industry  seems  principally  to 
have  been  in  the  hands  of  individual  owners  whose 
establishments  were  small.  Certain  Lynn  shoe  manu- 
facturers reported  in  1832$  that  their  real  estate  and 
buildings  varied  in  value  from  $200  to  $2,000.  Fac- 

*  National  Industrial   Conference   Board  Report  on   Working 
Week  of  48  Hours  or  Less. 
fU.  S.  Public  Health  Service,  Bulletin  106. 
t  "The  Manufactures  of  the  United  States,"  Vol.  i :  232. 


154  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

tories  with  only  two  or  three  employees  were  common. 
An  establishment  with  a  hundred  workers  was  large. 
In  such  circumstances  the  relationship  between  the 
manufacturer  and  his  employees  was  similar  to  that 
which  subsisted  between  the  old  master  workman  and 
his  journeymen.  The  enactment  of  legislation  designed 
to  facilitate  the  growth  of  corporations  tended  to  de- 
stroy this  relationship.  The  corporation,  and  later  the 
trust,  created  a  new  industrial  environment,  which 
influenced  powerfully  the  position  of  workers.  In  the 
report  to  Secretary  McLane  in  1832,  the  accounts  of 
ninety  Pennsylvania  iron  manufactories  are  listed. 
Altogether  they  represented  an  investment  of  $3,- 
200,000.  The  United  States  Steel  Corporation  alone 
was  valued  at  $2,430,546,962.56  on  December  31, 
1920.*  S.  Smith  &  Company's  rolling  mill  and  nail 
factory  at  Pittsburgh  employed  twenty-five  men  and 
six  boys  in  1832.  The  United  States  Steel  Corpora- 
tion had  267,345  on  its  rolls  in  1920.  The  rolling  mill 
of  1832  was  managed  by  the  owner.  There  were  more 
than  a  hundred  thousand  stockholders  of  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  during  1921.  Most  owners 
can  have  little  share  in  management. 

In  1914  nearly  a  third  of  all  wage  earners  engaged 
in  manufactures  worked  in  establishments  employing 
500  or  more  persons.  Only  about  13  per  cent  of  the 
wage  earners  were  employed  in  factories  using  twenty 
workers  or  fewer,  according  to  the  1914  census  of 
manufactures.  The  number  of  these  small  factories 
is  large,  composing  as  it  did  in  1914  upwards  of  70 

*  Nineteenth  Annual  Report,  United  States  Steel  Corporation, 
Report  to  Stockholders,  1920. 


The  Status  of  Workers  155 

per  cent  of  the  entire  number  of  industrial  establish- 
ments in  the  country,  but  the  proportion  of  workers 
employed  is  very  small.  On  the  other  hand,  enormous 
organizations  are  common.  Corporations  employing 
as  many  as  10,000  workers  excite  little  comment,  while 
the  more  conspicuous  concerns  utilize  the  energies  of 
thirty,  forty,  fifty,  and  even  a  hundred  thousand  men 
and  women. 

Great  power  over  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  the  men 
and  women  employed  is  possessed  by  the  directors 
of  such  enterprises.  Many  large  corporations  have,., 
created  cities,  in  which  their  factories  are  situated  and  / 
their  workers  are  housed.  Often  the  corporation  owns 
the  entire  community.*  In  many  of  the  "satellite" 
towns,  workers  employed  by  the  dominant  industry 
occupy  houses  owned  by  their  employers,  buy  food  and 
clothes  and  other  necessities  of  life  at  stores  owned  by 
the  employers,  send  their  children  to  schools  maintained 
by  the  employers,  worship  in  churches  established  by 
their  employers,  and  finally  are  buried  in  cemeteries 
located  upon  their  employers'  land.  Many  of  the  com- 
munities in  which  employers  have  provided  the  essential 
utilities  of  living,  it  must  be  admitted,  are  on  the  whole 
far  more  comfortable  and  decent  than  the  localities 
which  have  been  neglected.  But  while  one  is  scrupu- 
lous in  refraining  from  suggesting  censure  of  those 
who  have  come  into  this  great  industrial  power,  it  is 
impossible  to  refuse  to  observe  the  fact.  The  relation- 
ship between  such  companies  as  the  United  States  Steel 
Corporation,  the  General  Electric  Company,  the  United 

*  Testimony  before  United  States  Commission  on  Industrial 
Relations,  dealing  with  Lead,  S.  D. 


156  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

States  Rubber  Company,  the  Ford  Motor  Company,  the 
International  Harvester  Company,  American  Woolen 
Company,  to  cite  only  a  few,  and  their  employees,  is 
a  new  social  phenomenon.  In  theory  the  humblest 
citizen  worker  enjoys  all  the  political  and  social  rights 
of  the  richest  and  most  potent  industrial  magnate.  But 
the  economic  status  of  the  employee  of  a  large  cor- 
poration is  not,  save  in  the  industries  where  trade 
unionism  has  reached  maturity,  one  of  independence. 
A  new  stratification,  without  albeit  the  loyalties  of 
the  older  feudal  system,  has  been  created  by  the  factory 
system.  A  few  men,  often  one  man,  can  exercise  a 
determining  influence  on  the  lives  of  tens  of  thousands 
of  his  fellow  citizens.*  In  the  case  of  the  United  States 
Steel  Corporation  a  small  group  of  men  having  mem- 
bership on  the  board  of  directors  were  able,  during 
August,  1919,  to  compel  66,711  men  to  work  twelve 
hours  a  day  and  to  conform  their  entire  existence  to 
that  obtrusive  fact.  A  few  directors  and  their  local 
representatives  in  the  management  can,  through  their 
political  affiliations,  deny  to  their  employees  the  con- 
stitutional rights  of  free  speech  and  free  assemblage.! 
That  is  not  an  unparalleled  development  in  history,  but 
'  it  throws  light  on  the  changes  in  the  position  of  workers 
accomplished  by  the  rise  of  the  factory  system.  The 
political  revolution  which  tended  to  liberate  the  en- 
thralled workers  of  the  eighteenth  century  has  been  in 
part  checkmated  by  the  industrial  revolution  whose 
unconscious  drift  has  been  toward  servility  instead  of 
freedom. 


*  The  Survey,  March  5,  1921,  page  811. 
t  Idem,  November  8,  1919. 


The  Status  of  Workers  157 

In  part  this  has  been  the  inevitable  consequence  of 
the  system  of  incorporation  with  limited  liability. 
Nearly  three-quarters  of  the  industrial  workers  of  the 
country  are  employed  in  establishments  owned  by 
corporations.  Only  about  five  per  cent  work  in  fac- 
tories owned  by  individuals.*  It  is  difficult  for  any 
except  the  largest  stockholders  to  exert  any  influence 
upon  the  policies  of  the  companies  in  which  their  money 
is  invested.  The  ownership  of  many  of  the  most 
important  corporations  is  widely  distributed.  The 
American  Telephone  and  Telegraph  Company,  for  ex- 
ample, reported  over  150,000  stockholders  in  1921. 
Corporations  are  often  managed  by  officers  who  are 
responsible  to  distant  owners.  Absentee  ownership 
has,  so  far  as  industrial  conditions  are  concerned, 
resulted  in  irresponsible  ownership.  Some  of  the  most 
serious  industrial  controversies  of  recent  years  are  the 
consequences  of  this  system,  f  Discussing  the  copper 
strikes  which  were  prevalent  in  Arizona  during  the 
summer  of  1917,  the  President's  Mediation  Commis- 
sion observed  that  "distant  ownership,  wholly  apart 
from  its  tendency  to  divorce  income  from  the  respon- 
sibility for  the  conditions  under  which  it  is  acquired, 
creates  barriers  against  the  opportunity  of  understand- 
ing the  labor  aspects,  the  human  problems  of  industry, 
and  solidarity  of  interest  among  the  various  owners 
checks  the  views  of  any  one  liberal  owner  from  pre- 
vailing against  the  autocratic  policy  of  the  majority." 

The  Arizona  copper  mines  presented  during  the  war 

*  Abstract  of  the  Census  of  Manufactures,  1914,  page  374. 

t  Report  of  the  President's  Mediation  Commission  and  of  the 
Congressional  Investigation  into  the  Colorado  Coal  Strike  of 
1913-1914. 


158  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

an  aggravated  case,  but  it  is  widely  true  that  the  irre- 
sponsibility of  owners  under  a  system  of  corporate 
production  has  menaced  greatly  the  welfare  of  the 
workers  employed.  Men  and  women  are  employed  by 
overshadowing  corporations  whose  widely  scattered 
owners  lack  influence,  and  too  often  interest,  in  the 
conditions  of  work  and  of  life  created.  Nothing  has 
happened  in  recent  years  to  justify  any  belief  that 
industry  would  be  operated  in  smaller  units  and  that 
ownership  would  become  identical  with  management. 
The  tendency  for  the  immediate  future  seems  fixed  in 
the  opposite  direction.  So  far  as  the  material  condi- 
tions of  work  are  concerned,  the  escape  lies  through 
^governmental  regulation,  as  already  partially  developed 
in  safety  codes,  and  to  an  extent  through  trade  union 
agreements.  The  liberty  of  the  individual  worker 
employed  in  such  enterprises  cannot  be  secured  except 
through  the  agency  of  unions.  The  benevolence  of 
the  good  employer  may  provide  better  material  con- 
ditions than  any  union  could  exact  or  any  government 
compel,  but  in  the  face  of  the  overshadowing  size  of 
modern  corporations  nothing  except  a  banding  together 
of  workers  into  associations  competent  by  their  num- 
bers and  the  intelligence  of  their  leadership  to  meet 
their  employers  upon  equal  grounds  can  nourish  that 
freedom  and  independence  characteristic  of  farmers 
who  are  secure  in  the  possession  of  their  own  lands. 
Economic  security  is  the  prerequisite  to  political  lib- 
erty, and  unionization  is  the  only  apparent  refuge  of 
the  workers  who  are  unwilling  to  trust  their  fortunes 
to  others. 

This  conclusion  arises   from  the  very  nature  of 


The  Status  of  Workers  159 

modern  large  scale  industry.  Light  was  thrown  on  the 
matter  by  the  remark  of  Mr.  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr., 
at  the  first  industrial  conference  called  by  former 
President  Wilson.  The  younger  Rockefeller  said: 
"Surely  it  is  not  consistent  for  us  as  Americans  to 
demand  democracy  in  government  and  to  practice 
autocracy  in  industry."  The  statement  is  true,  but 
it  is  also  true  that  present  industrial  organization  is  an 
offshoot  of  the  family  system  rather  than  of  govern- 
mental forms.  The  early  factories,  it  has  been  noted, 
were  family  affairs.  A  master  workman,  assisted  by 
his  family  and  a  few  outsiders,  comprised  the  entire 
personnel  of  the  organization.  To  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft,  the  pioneer  of  feminism  and  of  suffrage,  the 
husband  and  father  was  in  the  home  the  spiritual 
equivalent  of  the  tyrannical  king  in  the  nation.  Women 
and  children  had  few  legal  rights  which  the  male  head 
of  the  household  need  respect.  That  family  life  was 
not  on  the  whole  unpleasant  when  Queen  Victoria  was 
a  child  is,  incidentally,  perhaps  to  be  explained  by  the 
fact  that  human  customs  are  often  more  amiable  than 
laws.  The  almost  absolute  power  which  the  father 
and  husband  possessed  in  the  household  at  the  end  of  / 
the  eighteenth  century  has  been  the  model  upon  which 
American  industry  was  unconsciously  organized.  In- 
stead of  having  a  few  workers,  a  somewhat  enlarged 
family,  the  modern  manager,  who  is  the  heir  of  the 
master  workman,  may,  in  such  an  extreme  case  as  that 
of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation,  control  the 
lives  of  well  on  to  a  million  people.  While  it  is  true 
that  workers,  even  in  the  largest  establishments,  are 
employed  upon  a  contract  rather  than  upon  the  status 


160  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

basis,  it  is  also  not  to  be  denied  that  in  its  power  to 
impose  conditions  such  a  corporation  exerts  the  same 
kind  of  authority  exercised  in  other  generations  by  the 
male  head  of  the  house. 

Yet  it  may  be  conceded  that  at  its  worst  this  over- 
weening power  which  the  modern  employer  has  obtained 
as  a  joint  product  of  the  old  family  system  and  the  new 
integration  of  industry  is  not  more  difficult  to  endure 
than  was  the  petty  tyranny  of  many  a  master  mechanic 
in  the  old  days.  The  occasional  memoirs  of  appren- 
tices both  in  this  country  and  in  Europe,  whence  the  be- 
ginnings of  our  civilization  were  borrowed,  betray  no 
trailing  clouds  of  affection  for  the  old  order.  Rous- 
seau assuredly  was  as  keenly  irritated  by  his  master  as 
any  modern  workman  is  likely  now  to  be  by  an  incon- 
siderate foreman.  Nevertheless,  an  industrial  system 
which  results  in  organizations  employing  as  many  as  a 
quarter  of  a  million  workers  manifestly  cannot  operate 
on  the  plan  of  an  eighteenth  century  family.  Good 
employers  are,  of  course,  preferable  to  bad  ones,  but 
whether  the  head  of  a  great  organization  is  good  or 
bad,  workers  need  the  protection  which  only  the  pos- 
session of  recognized  rights  assures.  Industry  is  thus 
a  battlefield  on  which  the  ideas  embodied  in  the  older 
family  system  are  contesting  for  supremacy  with  that 
other  group  of  principles  which  are  incorporated  in  the 
American  theory  of  self-government.  The  logic  of  the 
family  has  ruled  industry  to  a  large  extent,  but  in- 
creasingly the  logic  of  politics  is  demanding  recognition. 
If  self-government  is  right  on  the  political  field,  self- 
government  is  right  in  industry,  for  the  same  arguments 
arise  in  each  case.  Self-government,  the  logic  of  poli- 


The  Status  of  Workers  161 

tics,  means  among  other  things  the  recognition  of  trade 
unionism. 

Society  has  been  reluctant  to  concede  the  right  of 
industrial  self-government  because  of  the  double  social 
standard.  In  an  enlightening  bit  of  testimony  before 
the  United  States  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations, 
John  H.  Walker,  then  president  of  the  Illinois  State 
Federation  of  Labor,  set  forth  the  situation  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  trade  unionist.  Mr.  Walker  said  that 
the  double  economic  standard  was  the  fundamental 
cause  of  industrial  unrest.  Asked  what  he  meant  he 
replied : 

"A  workman  is  not  supposed  to  ask  anything  more  than 
a  fair  day's  wage  for  a  fair  day's  work:  he  is  supposed 
to  work  until  he  is  fairly  tuckered  out — say  eight  hours — 
and  when  he  does  a  fair  day's  work  he  is  not  supposed 
to  ask  for  any  more  wages  than  enough  to  support  his 
family,  while  with  the  business  man  the  amount  of  labor 
furnishes  no  criterion  for  the  amount  they  receive. 
People  accept  it  as  all  right  if  they  do  not  do  any  work 
at  all,  and  accept  it  as  all  right  if  they  get  as  much 
money  as  they  can.  In  fact,  they  are  given  credit  for 
getting  the  greatest  amount  of  money  for  the  least 
amount  of  work.  .  .  .  The  average  worker  feels  that  he 
is  a  nonentity,  a  tool  to  be  used  by  those  who  own 
industries." 

The  condition  to  which  the  union  leader  pointed  is  so 
much  a  matter  of  custom  that  few  are  ever  aware  of 
the  diversity  of  standard.  The  working  man  is  still 
to  many  a  thing  to  be  used.  That  he  should  aspire  to 
the  sort  of  life  enjoyed  by  the  more  fortunate  seems 
astounding  to  some.  The  dignity  of  labor  is  a  common- 
place, and  yet  when,  the  other  day,  a  street  cleaner  in 
his  white  uniform  entered  a  large  hotel  in  New  York, 
he  was  arrested  for  disorderly  conduct.  It  mattered 


1 62  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

not  that  his  mission  was  a  perfectly  proper  and  lawful 
one — that  of  obtaining  a  theater  ticket.  His  clothes 
were  against  him.  The  man  was  taken  to  a  police 
station,  and,  strangest  of  all,  not  a  single  newspaper 
which  recounted  the  episode  appeared  to  find  anything 
extraordinary  in  it.  Apparently  it  is  so  much  a  matter 
of  custom  that  men  in  working  clothes  must  not  obtrude 
themselves  upon  the  attention  of  the  residents  of  a 
metropolitan  hotel — much  less  entertain  the  same  de- 
sires— that  no  commentator  saw  in  the  event  anything 
worthy  of  remark. 

The  double  standard  is  a  relic  of  the  old  inequality. 
As  long  as  some  men  had  a  servile  status,  others  more 
privileged  were  able  successfully  to  assert  that  dual 
principles  must  be  applied.  Servile  workers  were  not 
measured  by  the  same  tests  which  more  fortunate  folk 
applied  to  themselves.  That  idea  of  inequality,  of  a 
duality  of  standards,  has  lingered.  As  much  as  any- 
thing else  it  retards  the  acceptance  of  the  logic  of 
politics  by  industry. 

Trade  union  organization  is  itself,  however,  a  meas- 
ure of  the  present  position  of  workers.  In  the  strictly 
manufacturing  branches  labor  organization  is  relatively 
not  powerful,  although  the  garment-making  industry 
is  thoroughly  unionized.  The  railroads,  which  are  both 
a  product  and  a  cause  of  the  industrial  revolution,  are 
almost  completely  unionized.  This  also  is  true  of  the 
coal  mines,  which  bear  a  similar  basic  relationship  to 
industry  in  general.  On  the  other  hand,  in  such  a 
fundamental  industry  as  iron  and  steel,  unionism  hardly 
exists.  The  automobile  industry,  likewise,  is  singu- 
larly free  of  unionization.  In  general,  it  is  accurate 


The  Status  of  Workers  163 

to  say  that  between  four  and  five  million  American 
workers  are  enrolled  in  trade  unions,*  and  that  these 
workers,  although  only  a  minority  of  the  total  industrial 
population,  are  so  distributed  that  they  are  able  to 
exert  great  influence  upon  industry.  In  most  trades 
the  state  of  the  labor  market  is  the  measure  of  the 
power  of  unions.  If  labor  is  scarce,  the  unions  are 
able  to  exercise  considerable  power ;  on  the  other  hand, 
when  workers  are  abundant  the  unions  are  scarcely  able 
to  retain  the  advantages  they  gained  during  the  fat 
years.  So  far,  no  industrial  code  to  temper  this 
struggle  has  been  developed.  The  nearest  approach  to 
a  code  was  the  statement  of  principles  adopted  by  the 
employers  and  the  trade  union  leaders  who  formed 
the  National  War  Labor  Board.  This  was  a  war-time 
expression  and  patriotism  moved  the  leaders  to  more 
generous  action  than  has  ever  been  recorded  during 
peace.  The  President's  Industrial  Conference  of 
March,  1920,  attempted  less  formally  to  crystallize 
current  ideas  concerning  industrial  justice.  Congress 
in  the  Esch-Cummins  Transportation  Law  also  ap- 
proached the  subject. 

As  to  the  growing  or  disappearing  cleavage  of  the 
classes  it  is  difficult  to  form  a  balanced  conclusion. 
The  old  barriers  separating  the  classes  have  been 
broken  down,  but  new  barriers  have  been  erected. 
Alexander  Hamilton  would  feel  at  home  in  the  New 
York  of  to-day.  He  would  observe  social  contrasts  not 
less  marked  than  those  with  which  he  was  familiar. 
The  theory  of  the  rights  of  workers  and  of  employers 
has  radically  changed,  but  the  distance  between  the 

*  Annual  Report  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  1921. 


164  Indiistry  and  Human  Welfare 

humblest  tenement  dweller  and  the  family  living  on  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year  is  still  sufficiently 
great  to  satisfy  the  aristocratic  tastes  of  many  of  the 
founders  of  the  American  republic.  The  ideas  con- 
cerning the  separation  of  the  classes  have  changed,  but 
the  distances  are  not  less  marked.  Industry  has  created 
great  wealth.  The  total  value  of  the  products  of 
American  manufacturing  establishments  in  1919  was 
upwards  of  sixty-two  billion  dollars.*  The  number  of 
industrial  establishments  had  not  comparably  increased. 
For  all  industries,  288,376  were  counted  in  1919.  In 
1850,  123,025  establishments  were  recorded,  with  a 
total  output  estimated  to  be  worth  slightly  over  a 
billion  dollars.  The  products  of  manufacturing  estab- 
lishments increased  in  value  sixty- two- fold  during  those 
years,  while  the  number  of  establishments  was  hardly 
more  than  doubled.  That  change — the  enormous  in- 
crease in  absolute  wealth,  and  comparatively  slight 
increase  in  the  numbers  of  establishments — gives  an 
index  of  the  change  in  status  which  the  workers  have 
experienced  as  a  result  of  the  industrial  revolution. 

That  very  fact,  however,  has  produced  a  far-reaching 
result.  Because  of  the  vastness  of  the  size  of  industrial 
organizations  the  individual  worker  is  dwarfed  into 
insignificance,  but  so  many  workers  have  become  con- 
scious of  personal  impotence  that  great  mass  movements 
have  come  into  existence.  Workers  have  a  solidarity 
now  which  is  unprecedented  in  the  history  of  Western 
civilization.  Trade  unionism,  socialism,  and  a  score 
of  variant  doctrines  have  welded  together  millions. 
Unity,  even  for  the  vaguely  defined  purposes  which 

*  Census  of  Manufactures,  Press  Release,  May  24,  1921. 


con- 
is  an 
n  the 


The  Status  of  Workers  165 

are  the  ends  of  trade  unionism,  has  made  an  enormous 
difference  in  the  position  of  workers.  Industrially,  the 
individual  artizan  counts  for  less  than  did  his  great- 
grandfather in  a  New  England  village,  but  in  the  mass 
artizans  count  for  more  than  ever  before.  The  con- 
sciousness of  power,  even  of  dormant  power 
emboldening  and  dignifying  influence.  Success  in  the 
World  War  admittedly  was  within  the  reach  of  that 
group  of  nations  whose  working  people  were  most 
determined  upon  victory.  Every  statesman  realized 
that  and  in  the  end  the  workers  understood  it.  The 
crisis  crystallized  what  had  before  been  dimly  perceived 
and  at  the  same  time  it  bred  a  new  spirit.  The  worker 
of  to-day  knows  that  he  has  obtained  insecurity  in 
exchange  for  the  comparative  assurance  which  belonged 
to  his  forebears.  He  knows  that  when  he  is  employed, 
however,  he  lives  more  comfortably  than  did  his 
ancestors,  and  he  is  convinced  that  security  is  also 
within  his  reach.  Labor  is  no  longer  docile.  Political 
recognition  has  been  gained,  but  it  seems  to  be  an 
imperfect  tool,  since  final  power  appears  to  rest  in  the 
economic  rather  than  in  the  political  realm.  For  that 
reason  unrest  does  not  abate  with  the  passage  of  years. 
Workers  in  the  United  States  have  not  clearly  defined 
a  program  of  action  for  use  during  a  long  period,  but 
they  cherish  a  fundamental  purpose.  Through  union 
on  the  industrial  and  political  fields  they  evince  a  deter- 
mination to  win  for  themselves,  their  women  and  their 
children,  a  share  in  the  better  life  which  the  mechanical 
revolution  has  brought  within  view.  Few  who  con- 
template the  present  fruits  of  the  factory  system  will 
challenge  the  faith  that  it  is  possible  to  lift  high  the 


1 66  Industry  and  Human  Welfare 

level  of  living  of  those  who  now  with  such  inadequate 
rewards  bear  the  heavier  burdens  of  production.  The 
people  who,  by  the  use  of  sovereign  power,  created  a 
new  industry,  can,  by  that  same  sovereignty,  distribute 
more  equitably  the  wealth  obtained.  How  that  is  to 
be  accomplished  is  not  entirely  clear.  Counter  cur- 
rents still  surge  and  add  confusion  to  an  era  of  tran- 
sition, but  of  the  general  movement  there  is  no  uncer- 
tainty. Factories  were  built  to  increase  human  wel- 
fare, and  it  lies  within  the  hollow  of  the  hand  of  this 
nation  to  fulfill  that  historic  desire, 


THE  END 


INDEX 


Agricultural  labor,  67 
Aldrich  Committee,  84 
American     Emigrant     So- 
ciety, 126 
American     Federation     of 

Labor,  99,  104 
American  Red  Cross,  138 
Annals  of  Congress,  16 
Annual  earnings,  88 
Apprentice,  39,  47 
Artizan,  16 
Assumption  of  risk,  136 

Beveridge,  William  H.,  116 
Brandeis,  Louis  D.,  103 
Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics, 

89,  107,  118 
Bushnell,  Horace,  83 
Business  Cycle,  118 

Carey,  Mathew,  34,  70 
Childbirth,  69 
Child  labor,  4,  44,  55,  59 
Children's  Bureau,  74 
Clothing,  artizan's,  78 
Compensation      legislation, 

137 
Continuous  industry,  140 


Contributory       negligence, 

136 

Corporations,  154 
Cost  of  living,  92 
Coxe,  Tench,  41,  48,  81, 


Dangerous  trades,  68 
Debtors,  136 
Doffer  girls,  21 
Domestic  service,  67 
Du  Pont,  E.  L,  109 
Dust  hazard,  69 

Education,  52,  96 
Eight-hour  day,  55,  65,  99, 

106 

Enforcement,   54 
Esch-Cummins  Law,  163 

Factory  laws,  66 
Family  Manufactures,  61 
Family  System,  159 
Fatigue,  69,  100,  142 
Fitch,  John  A.,  109 
Forty-  four      hour      week, 

107 
Freedom  of  Contract,  103 


167 


i68 


Index 


Gallatin,  Albert,  41 
Goldmark,  Josephine,  104 
Governmental  Interference, 
25 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  i,  28, 

3i,37 

Hart,  Hornell,  117 
Hazard,  Thomas  B.,  17 
Health,  64 

Health  Insurance,  143 
Hoffman,  Frederick  L.,  138 
Home  manufactures,  78 
Homespun,  83 
Hours  of  labor,  20,  64 

Immigration,  33,  36,  125 
Immigration  Report,  87 
Incorporation  laws,  27 
Indentured  servants,  12 
Index  number,  85 
Industrial    accidents,     134, 

138 

Industrial  Commission  of 
Ohio,  89 

Industrial  disease,  141 

Infant  mortality,  74 

International  Labor  Con- 
ference, 132 

Knights  of  St.  Crispin,  149 

Labor  turnover,  124 
Labor  union,  98,  158 
Laissez  faireism,  25,  63 


Land  laws,  35 
Lauck,  W.  Jett,  87 
Limited  liability,  157 
Living  wage,  72,  92 

Mann,  Horace,  56 
Manufactory  House,  19 
Married  women,  73 
Mechanics,  17,  28 
Meeker,  Royal,  144 
Migratory  workers,  123 
Minimum  wage,  72 
Molineux,  William,  19 

National  Industrial  Confer- 
ence Board,  90,  92,  105 
National  War  Labor  Board, 

163 

Night  Work,  66,  67,  109 

Oregon  Ten-hour  law,  103 
Output,  105 

Pay  of  soldiers,  16 

Phossy  jaw,  68 

Pioneer  cabins,  79 

Play,  58 

Police  power,  103 

President's  Conference  on 
Unemployment,  130 

President's  Industrial  Con- 
ference, 66,  106 

President's  Mediation  Com- 
mission, 157 


Index 


169 


Prohibition  of  employment, 

68 

Property  holders,  8 
Protection,  2,  31 
Public  schools,  147 

Railroad  Labor  Board,  92 
Real  wages,  85 
Redemptioners,  12,  78 
Regulation    of    commerce, 

30 

Reservoir  of  labor,  125 
Rhythms,  101 
Robinson,  Mrs.  Harriet  H., 

39 
Rockefeller,   John  D.,  Jr., 

159 
Rural  children,  76 

Safety,  64,  134 
School  law,  52 
Seasonal  demand,  121 
Self-government,  160 
Servility,  156 
Seven-day  week,  109 
Shoemaking,  149 
Slater,  Samuel,  7,  20 
Social  control,  134 
Stabilizing  production,  130 
Standard  of  living,  77 
Status  of  workers,  148 
Strain,  142 
Strike,  53,  64 


Suffrage,  8,  34,  99 
Sunday  laws,  112 
Sunday  work,  no 
Sweat  shops,  70 
Sydenstricker,  Edgar,  87 

Tariff,  24,  29,  33 
Ten-hour  day,  65,  66 
Textile  factories,  71 
Tuberculosis,  69 
Twelve-hour  day,  109 

Underfeeding,  75 

Unemployment,  83,  114 

Unemployment  insurance, 
114 

United  States  Commission 
on  Industrial  Relations, 
161 

United  States  Employment 
Service,  128 

United  States  Steel  Cor- 
poration, 109 

United  States  Supreme 
Court,  103 

Wages,  19,  33,  71,  80 
Walker,  John  H.,  161 
War  Industries  Board,  89 
Wealth,  44 
Working  mothers,  74 
Workmen's    compensation, 
141 


\ST  DATE 


«?•; 


IOAN  DEPT. 


MAY  2  9  1969  JT 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


574262 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


-  '    I     . 


